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That was an excellent one.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Very little in the previous career of director Paul Mazursky gave any hint of the depth and complexity of this comedy drama, adapted from an Isaac Bashevis Singer story about the misadventures of a Jewish refugee (Ron Silver) in New York City shortly after World War Two. Silver has a few problems most men wouldn't mind sharing, including a wife who is more a devoted servant and a mistress as passionate as she is temperamental, but the cozy arrangement is complicated by the unexpected return of his first wife, long thought dead, to act as a ghostly conscience and councilor for her bewildered husband. The film is so well made, with such attention to period flavor and detail, that it seems mean to point out its few nagging shortcomings: the haphazard structure, with too many sudden, incompatible changes in mood, and the equally inconsistent characters (it's never made clear, for example, why all three women are so devoted to this particular nobody). Too bad some of the effort that went into the production didn't first go into the script, but it's still an unusually rich experience, with an added dimension of depth from the specters of the Holocaust still haunting each character.

The acting was nice, the story good... But I am just wondering, why those people are speaking to each other with an Italian ACCENT all the time? I mean, they are Polish! "Herman Broder" is a guy, who escape from the Nazi's in Poland. They are Polish people with Jewish background. Just to make some simple minded watchers ("somewhere underdeveloped in Europe") clear that the main characters are Jewish, letting them speak with an Italian accent is so unbelievable! However, the acting was very nice and even if the sexual scenes are exaggerated a little bit, it is a good movie to watch (for adults - who can understand this) because some scenes are really heart-breaking... Can only recommend it.

After reading the novel this film was based on, I thought: "No way! There is absolutely no way they can portray these raw emotions on film!" But that's exactly what the amazing actors do! The three women are as different as they could be, but each character is spot-on. Between these 3 women (Lena Olin, Anjelica Houston and Margaret Sophie Stein) is Ron Silver, whose character's emotions are clearly displayed on his face - I don't know if he is the anchor in the movie, because at times he is overshadowed by his female co-stars, but he makes me sympathize with him.The "old" feel of the movie is great, and I do believe that it's a realistic image of New York in the late '40s.It might be a bit depressing, but it should be seen if not only for the acting - trust me, it's fantastic!

Singer is a downer (except for the cinematically changed ending of Yentl), and this extremely well-performed and well-directed sado-masochistic tale is no exception. This film truly makes you feel its characters' abundant and excruciating pains. The Holocaust was Hell, and this film convinces me that the only thing worse than getting killed in a concentration camp, is surviving one.