The Chosen

In the New York of the 1940s two Jewish boys meet at a baseball game and become friends. Danny is the son of a Hasidic rabbi; he is expected to take his father's place and has to live inside the wall put up between him and the world. Reuven's father is a teacher of modern views. The two families live in different worlds in the same city. Jeremy Kagan directed the film from Chaim Potok's novel. Rod Steiger plays the rabbi and Maximilian Schell the other father. In the background is the end of the war and the argument over the founding of the state of Israel; the two fathers stand on opposite sides of it. The telling makes neither side ridiculous; both plainly love their child, and their methods differ.