"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."

-Tablet Magazine (Dec. 2011) naming Hungry Hearts as one of their 100 Greatest Jewish Films

SELECTED SCREENINGS

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (2010)
Yiddish Book Center (2010)
Hartford Jewish Film Festival (2010)
Berg Orchestra (2009)
Austria Film Archive (2009)
Jewish Museum of Prague (2009)
Jewish Culture Festival, Cracow, Poland (2008)
Jewish Film Festival, Vienna (2007)
New York Jewish Film Festival (2007)
Montreal Jewish Film Festival (2005)

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.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"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

EXTERNAL LINKS

Article from THE JEWISH ADVOCATE (pdf)

FLYER: HUNGRY HEARTS SCREENING AT USC
November 2006

PURCHASE DVD

HOME USE ONLY $36.00 plus shipping Home Use Only DVD (Not for Classroom/Institutional Use) Does not include Public Performance Rights Home Use Policy (pdf)

INSTITUTIONAL USE $72.00 plus shipping Classroom/Institutional Use Only DVD Does not include Public Performance Rights Institutional Use Policy (pdf)

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Hungry Hearts

USA, 1922, 80 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by E. Mason Hopper

NEWLY RESTORED
by The National Center for Jewish Film

2006 Musical Score composed, performed and recorded by musicians from the USC Thornton School of Music under the direction of David Spear

$72 Institutional Use DVD
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$36 Home Use DVD
Buy Now

Public Exhibition 16mm, Beta Rental also available (Silent version only)