Restored by NCJF with the cooperation of Samuel Goldwyn Pictures and the British Film Institute
Based on the short stories of Anzia Yezierska, the first writer to bring stories of American Jewish women to a mainstream audience, Hungry Hearts focuses on the members of the Levin family who emigrate from Eastern Europe to New York City's Lower East Side. Abraham, the pious father learned in religion but uninterested in business, has difficulty making a living and adjusting to life in America. The daughter Sara scrubs floors in the tenement in order to earn money and "become a somebody." The mother Hannah, a noble matriarch, scrimps and saves to paint her dingy kitchen white only to have her landlord raise the rent because of the improvements. Filmed on location on the Lower East Side, this bittersweet classic captures the hopes and hardships of Jewish immigrants in the New World.
"Hungry Hearts may be more of an entertainment than a social film, but its slice-of-life approach gives it unusual value. The picture of downtrodden Jews may border on the sentimental, but the feeling is right."
- Kevin Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence
Article from THE JEWISH ADVOCATE
November 2006
The National Center For Jewish Film
Brandeis University, Lown 102, MS053, Waltham MA 02454
P: (781) 899 7044, F: (781) 736 2070
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