MOVIE REVIEWS : ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER: A CELEBRATION

Isaac Bashevis Singer, central figure in the two films “Isaac in America” and “The Cafeteria” (which opened Wednesday at the Nuart), is a mild-looking little man with a dry, gentle voice that winds up devastating you. And the first of these two movies, both directed by Amram Nowak, shows him with a master portraitist’s steady hand.

The 82-year-old writer has an elfin quality. There’s something beyond venerable wisdom in his remarks, something seductive and wry. (“We must believe in free will; we have no choice,” he says.) This is a man, we suspect, whose specialties are literature and love--though he’s not bad on cafeterias, lonely Upper West Side apartments, Coney Island, cabalists, ghosts, demons, obsessions, schlemiels of all varieties, and the ways in which the wounded or persecuted can survive a cruel world.

In his writing--the novels, translations and hundreds of Yiddish stories that have appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward since the mid-’30s--the most remarkable stylistic quality is spareness: a hard, pure, stripped-down quality appropriate for a newspaper. When we hear that perfectly rational voice, how can we help believing the wonders he describes, the miseries and delights?

Both films are sympathetic and careful, but the first is by far the better. The second, “The Cafeteria,” is an adaptation of a Singer short story. The original had lovely descriptions of cafeteria ambiance (with aromatic steam tables and clouds of chatter). But the movie becomes too mundane, not steelly enough to evoke the story’s surface of pathos, its undercurrent of terror, its evocation of the power of memory and evil.

Zohra Lampert makes an earthy and heart-rending Esther (the concentration camp survivor who sees Hitler among the stewed prunes and kreplach). But the pace is too leisurely, the rhythms too uncertain, the final shock lacking the right dry, clear-eyed inevitability.

“Isaac in America,” on the other hand, is a little gem, one of the best evocations of a writer’s personality. Its strategy is simple. It follows Singer around in his daily routines--plus the acceptance of the 1978 Nobel Prize. It listens and watches as he spins for us, from his mother lode of memory, sights and sounds of the past. (In a re-creation of his story, “A Day in Coney Island,” Singer and Judd Hirsch act as narrators over shots of the original Brooklyn locations.)

This movie celebrates Singer--but since Singer steadfastly refuses to celebrate himself, it never sinks into bathos or flackery. How ordinary he is, the film seems to say; how easy it must be to simply sit down, as he does, and write hundreds of marvelous stories! As easy as breathing, or walking through the West ‘80s, or dropping into a local cafeteria for a dish of soup. A snap, a miracle, child’s play.

This mystical writer has the most anti-mystificationist of personalities. And he, and director Nowak, take special delight in showing us his messy room: the stacks and satchels full of old yellowing Forwards, the awards scattered around, the genial confusion. “In the beginning, before the light, there was chaos,” he explains. And the chaos that surrounds him--the piles of bric-a-brac (like the fertile mysteries of creation and art)--become comforting and close. And as earthy and human as the city noise coming through the window--cries and car sounds drifting up from the streets below.

‘ISAAC IN AMERICA’ A Direct Cinema Limited release of an Amram Nowak Associates production. Producer Kirk Simon. Director Amram Nowak. Executive producer Manya Starr. Camera Jerry Pantzer. Music Ross Levinson. Editor Riva Freifeld. Story narration Judd Hirsch.

Running time: 58 minutes.

Times-rated: Family (some mature commentary).

‘THE CAFETERIA’

A Direct Cinema Limited Associates release of an Amram Nowak Associates production. Producer Simon. Director Nowak. Script Ernest Kinoy. Camera Pantzer. Associate producer Starr. Editor Jason Rosenfield. Music Leopold Godowsky. With Bob Dishy, Zohra Lampert, Morris Carnovsky, Howard Da Silva, Joe Silver.

Running time: 55 minutes.

Times-rated: Family (some mature dialogue).