[Hester Street] takes the bull by the horns, dealing solely … with life on New York's Lower East Side in 1896.

Its proportions and virtues are modest: it offers no labyrinthine saga of rags to riches to rags, no outsize characters flaunting their ethnic identity like a flag, no lashings of local colour. The narrative is dangerously slender, propelling a handful of ordinary characters along a well signposted road…. The plot … serves as a compact primer in the Americanisation of the immigrant Jew, stressing the impossibility of maintaining sacred habits and taboos in 'educated' New York.

The movie … has the qualities of a primer—stressing the same points repeatedly, presenting scenes crisply with few directorial distractions. Certainly, its perspective is limited…. Yet Hester Street covers its chosen ground with great skill and sensitivity.

Geoff Brown, "'Hester Street'," in Sight and Sound (copyright © 1976 by The British Film Institute), Vol. 45, No. 1, Winter...