MOVIE REVIEW : An Awkward, Endearing ‘Bridegroom’

“The Imported Bridegroom” is the right film in the right venue, the Cineplex Odeon Fairfax, in the traditional heart of the Jewish community. It has sufficient warmth, humor and substance to appeal to Jewish audiences, especially older people, but not enough style and pace to reach crossover audiences as did the very similar but far more polished “Hester Street.”

In adapting the title story of Abraham Cahan’s 1898 collection, first-time director Pamela Berger invariably has her heart in the right place but rarely her camera. Indeed, it’s amazing that a person who is a professor of art history has so little sense of visual flow or composition. But if cinematically “The Imported Bridegroom” is awkward to the point of being amateurish it is never less than endearing, thanks to Berger’s good-humored respect for Cahan’s understanding of the complexities and contradictions of human nature.

Set in 1900 Boston, the film has been aptly described as a “comedy of assimilation.” Having made a fortune in real estate, a middle-aged widower (Eugene Troobnick) with a beautiful, unmarried daughter (Greta Cowan) decides that in one stroke he will pave his way to paradise and provide a suitable husband for his daughter. This means returning to his native Polish village, where he wins at auction (for a whopping turn-of-the-century $15,000) a brilliant but nebbishy scholar (Avi Hoffman). Not surprisingly, his daughter, hoping to land an American-born doctor, rejects him immediately.

Cahan works his way through this predicament with considerable ingenuity, insight and amusement. If “The Imported Bridegroom” is gentle and forgiving in tone it nonetheless gives us a very good idea of what Jewish immigrants--or any group of immigrants, for that matter--were/are up against in coming to America, where it has always been such a temptation, especially for young people, to throw off their cultural and religious heritage and even to feel a sense of inferiority about them.

In many ways the widower is a hypocrite, yet his hesitancy to enter a Gentile restaurant or even a public library is palpably real. The film illuminates with humor as well as seriousness the often painful and perplexing challenge of preserving what is valuable in one’s heritage while adapting to a new country, especially one that from almost the beginning has been as materialistic and competitive as the United States.

Occasionally, Berger and her cinematographer Brian Heffron manage a graceful shift from one sequence to another, but much of the time their cuts are clumsy and the camera work unwieldy. Although there is a sense that the cast hasn’t been directed with much consistency it is reasonably effective, especially Hoffman, who has the plum part, full of slyness and surprises. On the plus side, the time and place of “The Imported Bridegroom” (Times-rated Family) is generally painstakingly evoked.

‘The Imported Bridegroom’

Eugene Troobnick: Asriel

Avi Hoffman: Shaya

Greta Cowan: Flora

Annette Miller: Mrs. Birnbaum

An ASA Communications release of a Lara Classics presentation. Writer-producer-director Pamela Berger. Based on a story by Abraham Cahan. Executive producer Frank Moreno. Cinematographer Brian Heffron. Editors Amy Sumner, Michael Levine. Music Bevan Manson, Rosalie Gerut. Production design Martha Seely. Costumes Deena Lynn Herman, Gillian Sharples. Sound Ted Evans. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

Times-rated Family.