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The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
The story of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg, the first major Jewish baseball star in the Major Leagues, is told through archival film footage and interviews with fans, former teammates, friends, and family. As a great first baseman with the Detroit Tigers, Greenberg endured antisemitism and became a hero and source of inspiration throughout the Jewish community, not incidentally leading the Tigers to Major League dominance in the 1930s.
| Release : | 1998 |
| Rating : | 7.6 |
| Studio : | |
| Crew : | Director, Writer, |
| Cast : | |
| Genre : | Documentary |
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Reviews
Absolutely amazing
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
This is a superbly done movie. It covers not only his career but his effects on the Jewish community. From the opening Yiddish "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" through the interviews with the men who were influenced by his life and became very successful, the movie is exceedingly well done.
This is not just an excellent film about Hank Greenberg, it is an excellent film about discrimination, and how one man took the high road to overcome it. This is a film that should be shown to young people in civics or history classes as the basis for discussion of anti-semitism in North America.
I'm not American, I'm not Jewish, and I don't like (or understand) baseball. But this film is perfect. For the first time, I can understand the connection between baseball and the American psyche. Every American kid (of any age) should see this. Thank you, Aviva.
It probably helps if you're a Jewish man over 60, but you won't need any help to be just blown away by this documentary. It's may be worth going just for the clips of the Marx Brothers, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" sung in Yiddish, and the Spencer Tracy/Kate Hepburn clips. It's really a documentary of America in the mid-thirties through the mid forties, and a commentary on how one extraordinary man represented his heritage in difficult times. The interviews, the footage, Bronx in the Depression, all of this works so well together that at the end the audience cannot help but applaud (it happened both times I saw it). Do not miss this jewel.
