Filmmaking | Interviews

Author Anita Diamant Brings Back ‘Hester Street’

4 Nov , 2014  

Written by Christine Galeone | Posted by:

Bestselling author Anita Diamant will present the classic film Hester Street at the Boston Jewish Film Festival. In an interview, she discusses why she chose the film for the festival’s Favorite Films from the Famous series.

As a bright and curious child in Newark, New Jersey, Anita Diamant spent many happy hours reading library book after library book about inspirational women. The biographies of women such as Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt and Marie Curie intrigued her. As an adult, her fascination with women whose gifts were not initially embraced by their societies took on a new form. Beginning with her critically acclaimed novel The Red Tent, the bestselling author has inspired many with tales of courageous, endearing women finding their way in the world.

On Thursday November 13 at 6:45 p.m., the celebrated Massachusetts writer will bring another captivating heroine to an audience at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. She will present Hester Street, a dramedy about Gitl, a traditional young Russian Jewish woman (played beautifully by Carol Kane) who — with their child — joins her Americanized husband in late 19th-century New York after a few years apart and must adapt to a shatteringly different environment. The award-winning film was chosen by Diamant as part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival’s Favorite Films from the Famous series.

Although Diamant says she chose the film because she enjoyed it, and it stayed with her all these years, she finds there is a resonance between the film and her soon to be released novel The Boston Girl. The immigrant experience is a theme explored through both stories. Diamant says Addie, The Boston Girl protagonist born in America in 1900 to immigrant parents, and Gitl are both “learning how to make their way in a very different world.” She says Addie “has to, sort of, leave behind her parents’ view of the world. Gitl has to leave behind her understanding of herself as a wife and as a woman — and the old world. She has to learn a new language. They’re pioneers in their own lives.” In the following edited interview, Diamant graciously discusses her impression of Hester Street, the powerful themes present in the film and why the film is an understated classic.

Christine Galeone: Congratulations on your upcoming novel and on being chosen to present one of your favorite classic films at the BJFF! Could you please tell me why you chose Hester Street?

Anita Diamant: Well, the two that popped into my head were Crossing Delancey and Hester Street — both of them, coincidentally really, by Joan Micklin Silver. And I was going to do either of them and couldn’t get Crossing Delancey. And I’m actually now really glad to be doing Hester Street, because it fits completely with the book that I’ve been working on, in so many ways. I guess I like her take on women and women in New York City.

CG: When you first viewed the film, what was your initial reaction?

Diamant: What I remembered most was the look of it and how much I liked the main character. It’s amazing to me how well it’s held up…

It’s in black and white, and even though it was made 40 years ago, it really has the feel of the 19th century about it.

CG: Has your understanding of the film’s characters and their struggles grown throughout the years?

Diamant: I sure hope so. [She laughs.] I hope I understand more now than I did then. Well, I certainly understood what was happening to her more.

One of the big scenes was when she gets divorced from him. And that whole scene with the rabbi, I actually know what that means now. I’m not sure I did then. I think the same compassion and rooting for her, that hasn’t changed.

CG: Any favorite scenes?

Diamant: I think I like any time Doris Roberts is on screen. She’s amazing. She’s funny and tough. And at first, she’s sort of a nosey neighbor…and you’re not so sure about her, and then she winds up being a very good friend and, kind of, an enabler for the main character to find her way. And I love that.

And I like the scene…when you see her without that horrible wig on, and you see her hair. It’s an outward sign of the transformation that has happened to her. It’s such a hideous wig. It really is. I really liked that scene.

I enjoy her getting the upper hand — that whole twist at the end where she takes control. It’s great fun to watch the worm turn.

CG: The empowering effect of close friendships among women seems to be a theme you enjoy exploring through your novels.

Diamant: I certainly do. It’s my theme — that and resilience! And this character, at first she’s such a mouse, but she finds her backbone with the help of her neighbor and, obviously, something deep inside her as well.

CG: Do you think Mrs. Kavarsky [the neighbor played by Doris Roberts] definitely played a big part in that?

Diamant: Oh, I do. Maybe she planted the seeds for her change. Maybe she just encouraged her to see herself differently and to see that her husband really was a bum. Although, I think Gitl would have figured that out eventually. [She chuckles.] So, yeah, I do. I think that, in a funny way, it’s a really central relationship. And I don’t know that everybody would say that. It’s kind of a triangle between the husband, Gitl and the American girlfriend.

CG: Since most of your novels are works of historical fiction, and Hester Street is set in the late 1800s, what is it about historical settings that sparks your imagination and leads to rich storytelling possibilities?

Diamant: It’s not like I go looking for historical settings. It’s just that when I find stories, they tend to be from a different period. There are some people who write about Elizabethan England. They write ten books about it. But I’ll stumble across either a character or a story from the past and feel like I didn’t know this. It was underwritten, so I want to tell that story.

And I think that this film also tells a sort of under-told story about what happens when husbands came ahead, and wives followed, and marriages fell apart. It’s an unromantic…It’s an unromantic vision of immigration. It was not easy. It was really hard. And this was not uncommon. In letters to The Forward, the Yiddish newspaper, it was full of stories of wives being abandoned.

CG: Why would you recommend people attend the BJFF showing of Hester Street?

Diamant: It’s a wonderful little movie. I just think it’s smart, and it’s entertaining. And it’s a little history lesson. But it’s good storytelling — which is why I go to the movies. And I care about the characters. Even the ones I don’t like, I care about. [She laughs.] They’re interesting.

It’s funny, and it’s sweet. And it’s not all sweetness and light. And I like happy endings.

For more information about Anita Diamant, visit her website www.anitadiamant.com. For more information about the BJFF showing of Hester Street, visit the BJFF website www.bjff.org.


For more information about Anita Diamant, visit her website www.anitadiamant.com. For more information about the BJFF showing of Hester Street, visit the BJFF website www.bjff.org.

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