| Yentl | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 103 reviews)
Sales Rank: 585
Category: Video
Actors: Robbie Barnett, Lynda Baron, Danny Brainin, Renata Buser, Allan Corduner
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 6301978587
UPC: 027616031334
EAN: 9786301978583
ASIN: 6301978587
Release Date: December 31, 1992
Theatrical Release Date: December 9, 1983
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com essential video
Barbra Streisand made her directorial debut with this 1983 adaptation of the Isaac Bashevis Singer story about a young Eastern European woman (Streisand) who disguises herself as a male at the turn of the century in order to get an education. Except for an excessive musical score with too many songs and Streisand's tiresome tendency to play characters who suppress their beauty, the film is crisp and engaging, and the gender-bending love story complications are fun, if gimmicky. Streisand gives a smart, vulnerable performance and gets fresh work from costars Mandy Patinkin and Amy Irving. --Tom Keogh
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| Customer Reviews: Read 98 more reviews...
 Where is the DVD? May 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I agree with others in wondering where the DVD is of this movie. I saw this movie in the theater when it came out and loved it then. Lately I have been listening to the music again and realizing it is some of Streisand's best. I wanted to see the movie again but, alas, no DVD after extensive searching!! I think it is long overdue.
 Forget DVD. Release it to BluRay May 7, 2008
It's hard to believe that DVDs have come and gone and still no high def Yentle.
Well, now BluRay is here. Come on! Give us Yentle the directors cut! Barbra already finished it! Just release it!!!
Prodigious Labor of Love Still Holds Up Due to Streisand's Heartfelt Approach April 8, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
As the first of only three films she has directed (so far), Barbra Streisand's 1983 labor of love still holds up as a charming turn-of-the-last-century fable that blends a contemporary sense of its three principal characters with an elaborately orchestrated soundtrack. The movie plays out very much like the way she uniquely sings a song - beautifully lush, emotionally intimate and a bit overdone albeit forgivably so. Regardless, what makes this film genuinely successful is the heartfelt manner in which Streisand chooses to tell her version of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy. Co-written by her and English playwright Jack Rosenthal, the plot focuses on a young Jewish woman in Eastern Europe who has been tutored on the Talmud by her scholarly father. Since women are forbidden to receive a formal education, it remains a clandestine vocation until her father dies at which point she cuts off her hair, dresses like a boy, and seeks passage to the nearest Talmudic academy.
En route, under the guise of Anshel, she meets Avigdor with whom she falls in love. Complications ensue since Yentl cannot reveal her true identity to Avigdor, who is in love with the comely Hadass, but Hadass becomes attracted to Anshel through the machinations of Avigdor when he is forbidden by Hadass' father to marry her. Streisand directs this romantic roundelay with warmth and sincerity rather than cheap laughs, and naturally, as a means to bridge her dramatic interpretations of the big ballads penned by Michel Legrand and her favorite lyricists, Alan & Marilyn Bergman. The songs reflect interior monologues to express how Yentl feels in any given situation, and the conjoining technique works beautifully since the songs are so well crafted and Streisand is in glorious, emotionally unfettered voice. The best are the solitarily prayerful "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" under a starry night sky, the lusciously unrequited passion driving "The Way He Makes Me Feel", and the triumphant declaration of "No Matter What Happens".
As expected from as meticulous a novice filmmaker as Streisand, the production values are superior, especially David Watkin's burnished cinematography and Roy Walker's production design. In truth, Streisand looks too old as Yentl the yearning woman, but in full drag as Anshel, she looks ideally boyish. As she traverses genders back and forth with a fumbling grace, it is probably the most subtle acting she has done in films. Mandy Patinkin, then more famous as a singing Che Guevara in Evita, makes for a potent romantic lead bringing a surly intellect and smoldering passion to Avigdor. As the third corner in the triangle, Amy Irving convincingly plays the subservient bride-to-be with sly intelligence. Veteran character actor Nehemiah Persoff (Some Like It Hot) makes his few poignant scenes count as Yentl's father. A bit overlong at 132 minutes, it isn't a perfect film but it remains an impressive directorial debut and the first film that validates Streisand's exalted standing as a multi-hyphenate entertainment figure.
 Fine Literature turned into Maudlin Claptrap via Streisand's Ego March 26, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
YENTL is a classic example of Star Ego run amok. The quirky and fine piece of literature from which it is taken, I.B. Singer's short story, "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy", is the story of a transgendered young woman from a shtetl in Eastern Europe, who, at the end of the story, chooses to live the rest of her life in the male persona of Anshel.
Singer himself was furious at what Streisand did to his story and wrote a stinging rebuke to her in the New York TIMES when the film premiered, ending by congratulating Streisand on turning it into such a terrific vehicle for herself.
The film has more holes than a wedge of Swiss cheese, but no matter, Streisand appears in just about every single frame, and despite the fact that her co-star, Mandy Patinkin, was possessed of a beautiful dark tenor voice and could sing as well as she, no one, but NO ONE, in here gets to sing a note but Streisand (unless you count Amy Irving humming quietly to herself as she sews by the fireside). I guess Streisand couldn't bear the thought of competition for two minutes of the audience's time. Or, God forbid, Patinkin winning praise for more nuanced, less over the top delivery than she.
In Streisand's mangling of Singer's original work, Yentl is actually a heterosexual girl who is merely an Oppressed Early Feminist. She hates housework and cooking and every other aspect of the female role to which Orthodox shtetl women were constrained in the early 20th century. However, as her widowed rabbi-father's only child, she is stuck with all of it. Her father rewards Yentl by indulging her thirst for learning and teaching her Torah, after dark, when the shutters are closed and the neighbors can't see. When her father dies, Yentl sees her chance to escape her inevitable fate of marriage, child-bearing, housework, and, without her father, no Torah study. She cuts off her hair, dons male clothing, and runs away, adopting the name of her dead brother, "Anshel".
In classic Hollywood fashion, we first see Yentl hacking awkwardly at her long locks with a big scissor, and next see her with a perfect, beautifully textured and layered haircut that could have come straight out of a fashionable Fifth Avenue salon. Streisand's slight stature, delicate hands, smooth throat, light voice, and powder-fresh complexion (she always did have nice skin) wouldn't have fooled a blind man, but apparently she fools everyone else in this rigidly gender-separated world.
Almost immediately, Yentl/Anshel meets up with and is taken under the wing of Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), the prize student in the yeshiva of a small town. Avigdor gets Yentl/Anshel into the yeshiva where, after an interview with the Rabbi, s/he is accepted as a student. Y/A's dream is fulfilled: she can now study Torah from dawn till dark with the other boys.
There's just one catch: she's fallen madly in love with the tall, handsome, and considerably more adult Avigdor, who seems to be about ten years older than every other boy in the yeshiva. The moment of revelation occurs at a lakeside where the yeshiva boys are swimming together. Naturally, Y/A refuses to join them, since she would have to disrobe. Avigdor comes out of the lake and, stark naked and gleaming with moisture, stands in front of Y/A with his genitalia about a foot from Y/A's face as he tries to persuade Y/A to go swimming. The idea that any Orthodox man would have behaved so immodestly even before another man is ludicrous (in fact, I can't think of ANY men of my acquaintence who would have done so), but artistic verisimilitude never interferes with Streisand's heavy-handed absurdities. Y/A runs back to her room in the boarding house, overcome with lust for the robust Avigdor.
Alas, Avigdor is engaged to Hadass (Amy Irving), the only daughter of the very well off Reb Vishkauer. Hadass is everything a well brought up young Orthodox girl should be, and everything Yentl was not and never will be. Hadass is adorably pretty and feminine, already a good cook, innocent, demure, non-confrontational, and uninterested in anything except pleasing Avigdor, marrying Avigdor, keeping Avigdor's home, making Avigdor a perfect wife, and bearing Avigdor's sons. And Avigdor can't wait to marry Hadass, because she embodies his absolute ideal of a wife, for exactly those reasons.
Having seen Y/A run away from home rather than face a lifetime of exactly these wifely duties, we are now asked to sympathize with her/his envious resentment of how effortlessly Hadass inhabits this role, and the love it garners her. "No wonder he loves her/What else could he do?/If I were a man, I would, too." This song hovers around the question of whether Y/A is jealous of Hadass for attaching Avigdor, or Avigdor for attaching Hadass, which would at least have been more in line with the dilemma faced by the Y/A of Singer's original story - it is Hadass whom the original Y/A longs for, not Avigdor.
Another hole in the story is that we never, at any time, figure out how Y/A and Avigdor pay for their rooms at the boarding house or even their food on the six nights a week that they don't eat at the Vishkauer's. They don't appear to earn a kopek between them with which to feed and keep themselves. Avigdor looks about 30 years old and does nothing but go to yeshiva to study every day.
And then, suddenly, Hadass's father finds out that Avigdor's younger brother committed suicide, and breaks off his daughter's engagement (suicide apparently invites the attention of the Evil Eye - a quaint euphemism for fear of passing on Bad Blood). The heartbroken Hadass is inconsolable, as is Avigdor - until he hits on the brilliant idea that Y/A should marry Hadass (a rapid marriage is customary to "save face" after a broken engagement and old men from distant towns are already parading in and out of Reb Vishkauer's study). Y/A and he are, Avigdor argues, already like brothers, and It Is Written that when a man's brother dies (and as far as Hadass goes, Avigdor might as well be dead) that man is obligated to marry his brother's wife (it probably happened once in Abraham's time and never again). Y/A, naturally, at first refuses, but when Avigdor threatens to leave town rather than see Hadass married to anyone else, the putatitve "Anshel" caves in. Hadass's parents are more than willing, as "Anshel" is, next to Avigdor, the best student in the yeshiva.
The fact that "Anshel" looks about 14, has cheeks as dewey as Hadass's own, no Adams' apple, has a voice that apparently hasn't broken yet, and no trade or visible means of support, doesn't seem to phase the parents. The marriage takes place, and Y/A handles the wedding night by getting the bride tipsy and spilling wine on the sheets so the elders will think the marriage has been consummated. Y/A handles the bride's bewilderment at not yet being deflowered day after day, by telling Hadass that as she is obviously still in love with Avigdor, it would be wrong to Do It until Hadass gets over him. Remarkably, the uneasy Hadass never confides in her mother about this ongoing non-consummation, as any other bride would have, especially given that Hadass and "Anshel" are living with the Vishkauers.
Hadass quickly loses patience with this scenario and forces the issue. For one thing, she is rather getting to like the undemanding "Anshel", and for another, she knows that her primary duty, above all others, is to bear sons, and she won't be able to if they go on as they are. She wants to be a full wife. Y/A realizes that the deception can't go on, and s/he plans a trip out of town with Avigdor. As soon as they are safely inside an inn, Y/A tells Avigdor her real name and who she is. When Avigdor refuses to believe her, Y/A opens her shirt and shows him her bosom.
Avidgor goes into a titanic rage, screaming at poor Yentl that she has spit on the Torah and spit on Hadass, and only calming down when it penetrates his eardrums that Yentl did it because she loved him and couldn't bear to part with him. Suddenly he sees the fresh cheeks, smooth neck, pretty hair, and delicate hands that we've all been staring at for two hours, wondering how people could be so stupid. Within a few minutes, Avigdor is talking about going away somewhere where no one knows them, where they'll get married and start life over again. Now that he knows she's a woman, Avigdor doesn't even bother to discuss the matter with Yentl, he turns into Man the Decider. When Yentl reminds him that she doesn't want just to darn his socks, Avidgor grudgingly says, all right, she can go on studying - after dark, when the shutters are closed and the neighbors can't see. Yentl realizes then that much as she loves Avigdor, Hadass is, after all, the woman he belongs with. She gives Avigdor two letters, one for the rabbi stating that the marriage was never consummated, and one for Hadass explaining the full truth. Yentl tells Avigdor that she doesn't think Hadass will listen to her parents any more, and to go home and marry her.
Avigdor takes Yentl's advice. A few months later, we see that Avigdor and Hadass are finally and happily married, and reading a letter from Yentl telling them that she is going someplace, "Where I hear things are different." The "someplace", of course, is America, and perhaps it escaped scriptwriter Streisand's notice that the early 20th century Orthodox community in America would no more have welcomed Yentl the Yeshiva Girl than her shtetl in Poland did - in fact, it wouldn't welcome her NOW. As far as Orthodox Judaism was and is concerned, things weren't different then and still aren't. It would be at least another half-century before the rise of Reform Judaism made possible the admittance of women to Torah and rabbinical studies. One could only imagine poor Yentl's disappointment when she arrives on the Lower East Side after her long journey. Now, who could have told the beknighted Yentl that in America girls could to to yeshiva and study Torah?!
At the end of the movie we see Yentl on an immigrant ship bound for America, striding from one end of it to the other while every other other human being on that ship is forced to remain completely motionless and silent as Yentl bawls her signature song, "Papa can you see/hear me!?" at the tops of her lungs.
For sheer magnitude of oversentimentalized, overblown, tasteless, maudlin, nonsense this film cannot be beat. As scriptwriter, producer, director, and star, the blame for this offensive piece of claptrap belongs squarely on Streisand's mighty shoulders.
For the record, the rest of the cast do heroically well, given that they are almost always in solely reactive mode. Amy Irving is charming as the demure Hadass; Patinkin is manly and stalwart as the passionate Avigdor; the supporting cast of friends, parents, tailors, are all fine. As mentioned above, despite the fact that Patinkin had a terrific voice (he made his name in the original "Evita" on Broadway and his rendition of "Younger than Springtime" in the version of "South Pacific" that he recorded in the 1980s is just gorgeous), this is a one-voice "musical".
The film won an Academy Award for Best Score, and the sobbing, shmaltzed-up bathos of Michel Legrand's and Marilyn and Alan Bergman's music suits the tawdry essence of the film perfectly. Audiences adored it (just take a look at all those gushing reviews below) for all the reasons I loathed it: the distortion of Singer's original story/play, its maudlin sentimentality, its pseudo-feminist posturing, its utter inability to make sense even within its own conceit, and, most of all, its manifestly sole reason for existing at all: to serve as a vehicle for the monstrous, out-of-control, legendary ego of Barbra Streisand, at the expense of any semblance of artistic taste or integrity.
Yentl March 12, 2008
This is an amazing work by Barbra Streisand. It has made a profound imprint on me in a variety of ways. The role of women and what they had to do in order to become what they were meant to achieve and the lyrics of the songs and how it relates to me personally and to other women. Also, how the theme of the play is so Barbra in her responsibilities to this movie. I recommend the soundtrack, the musical, the story behind the story, Barbra's desires to make this musical, the connection to the original play, the differences between Barbra's version and the original play. Bravo Barbra!
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