HUNGERIGE HERSTER
(Hungry Hearts)
Directed by E. Mason Hopper
Written by Julien Josephson (screenplay);
Anzia Yezierska (stories)
1922
80 minutes, B & W, silent film
Filmed in Hollywood, California and in New York City.
Released in the United States on November 26, 1922.
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.
This early silent film was produced in
a Hollywood studio but the street scenes were shot on
location on the Lower East Side in New York City. This
bittersweet classic captures the hopes and hardships of
Jewish immigrants in the New World.
-- The Center for Jewish Films
One of the 100 Greatest Jewish Films —Tablet Magazine:
"Goldwyn Pictures’ 1922 silent-movie adaptation of Anna
Yezierska’s classic novel of the Lower East Side is a
landmark document: a Jewish-immigrant-dominated film
industry’s first serious depiction of the Jewish-immigrant
experience."
Here is a flip clip from the movie.
In the ghetto there arrives Abraham, the wise student, with his
family from Russia. here, in the narrow street, with compressed
stores and tenements, he seeks the joy and the happiness from this
much-promised land ... "Hungry Hearts," is a soul-stirring moving
picture drama for all to see -- for everyone who suffers, and who
have struggled, with a divine belief in the inheritance of the Jew
...
Capitol Theatre, Broadway and 51st Street.
This coming Sunday, November 26th.
-- From the Yiddish Forward newspaper, November 26, 1922.