Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1975

The Contenders:

Glenda Jackson: Hedda
Carol Kane: Hester Street
Louise Fletcher: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (winner)
Isabelle Adjani: The Story of Adele H.
Ann-Margaret: Tommy

Mazel Tov!

Film: Hester Street
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

Hester Street starts life as a silent film with people dancing. One of those people is Yankl (Steven Keats), who goes by the name Jake. Jake is a Jewish immigrant to New York. He works essentially in a sweatshop making clothing, and frequently carrying on with a woman named Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh). The film has gone on for some time when we discover that in fact Jake is a married man, with a wife and child still in the old country.

It’s not until the film is a good 20 minutes in that we discover Jake’s wife Gitl (Carol Kane), who arrives at Ellis Island with their son (Paul Freedman). It slowly comes to light that there are two major conflicts here. The first is that Jake has lived a life as something like a playboy for a long time and with Gitl, he finds his extracurricular activities greatly reduced. The other, and far more significant problem according to Jake is that Gitl seems unable to assimilate into American society. Part of that comes from Gitl, who is unable to let go of many of the traditions of the old country and her difficulty in learning English. A bigger problem is that he doesn’t let her leave the apartment.