Brighton Beach Memoirs

In Brooklyn in 1937 a Jewish family is crammed into one house: mother, father, two sons, a widowed aunt and her two daughters. The father works two jobs, the money does not stretch and the news from Europe is bad. Fifteen-year-old Eugene watches all of it and delivers his commentary straight to camera. The subject is not adolescence but the family's invisible accounting. Who owes what to whom, who left school because of whom, whose sacrifice determined whose life. The film tells it in a comic register but the reckoning is serious. The form comes from the theatre: one house, many characters, consecutive scenes and a narrator addressing the camera. The stage structure is preserved too faithfully and in places the film feels like a stage rather than a camera. The source is Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical play, the first part of his trilogy. Matthew Broderick played Eugene on stage and won a Tony; the role went to Jonathan Silverman for the film. Simon wrote the screenplay himself. Blythe Danner plays the mother, Bob Dishy the father and Judith Ivey the aunt. Gene Saks directs. Who it is for: viewers who like Neil Simon adaptations and family comedy. Who it is not for: anyone expecting film language; this one cannot get out of its stage structure.