Great Film overall

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One reviewer complained about struggling to hear the dialogue. This is due to a huge mistake made when the film was improperly mastered for DVD; some DVD players, especially if they are trying to create phantom surround tracks with a 2-channel stereo-only system, will play this superb film incorrectly. If you can, experiment with the sound settings on your A/V amplifier, and you will likely find something that works correctly. Perhaps someday someone will properly remaster this film for Blu-Ray. It's entirely possible the 5.1 version streaming on iTunes will play correctly - I haven't checked.A reviewer from Turkey complained about everyone talking in Italian accents. This is absolutely not true, and, in fact, Margaret Sophie Stein, who plays Herman's Polish wife Yadwiga, is a native of Poland who had to work very hard to speak English for the film. As the sound supervisor on this film I know for a fact that the accents are very authentic.

Very little in the previous career of director Paul Mazursky gave any hint of the depth and complexity of this comedy drama, adapted from an Isaac Bashevis Singer story about the misadventures of a Jewish refugee (Ron Silver) in New York City shortly after World War Two. Silver has a few problems most men wouldn't mind sharing, including a wife who is more a devoted servant and a mistress as passionate as she is temperamental, but the cozy arrangement is complicated by the unexpected return of his first wife, long thought dead, to act as a ghostly conscience and councilor for her bewildered husband. The film is so well made, with such attention to period flavor and detail, that it seems mean to point out its few nagging shortcomings: the haphazard structure, with too many sudden, incompatible changes in mood, and the equally inconsistent characters (it's never made clear, for example, why all three women are so devoted to this particular nobody). Too bad some of the effort that went into the production didn't first go into the script, but it's still an unusually rich experience, with an added dimension of depth from the specters of the Holocaust still haunting each character.

After reading the novel this film was based on, I thought: "No way! There is absolutely no way they can portray these raw emotions on film!" But that's exactly what the amazing actors do! The three women are as different as they could be, but each character is spot-on. Between these 3 women (Lena Olin, Anjelica Houston and Margaret Sophie Stein) is Ron Silver, whose character's emotions are clearly displayed on his face - I don't know if he is the anchor in the movie, because at times he is overshadowed by his female co-stars, but he makes me sympathize with him.The "old" feel of the movie is great, and I do believe that it's a realistic image of New York in the late '40s.It might be a bit depressing, but it should be seen if not only for the acting - trust me, it's fantastic!

Singer is a downer (except for the cinematically changed ending of Yentl), and this extremely well-performed and well-directed sado-masochistic tale is no exception. This film truly makes you feel its characters' abundant and excruciating pains. The Holocaust was Hell, and this film convinces me that the only thing worse than getting killed in a concentration camp, is surviving one.