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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Goldstein (1965)

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 4)

All That Glitters Isn't 'Gold'

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Goldstein (1964) DVD

Before The Right Stuff, The Wanderers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The White Dawn, and even before The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid, director Philip Kaufman made this nearly forgotten, quasi-experimental debut that Jean Renoir called "the best American film I have seen in 20 years." Everyone has to start somewhere. Based on a old Hasidic fable about a elderly man who emerges from the river and changes the lives of everyone around him, Goldstein updates its story to Chicago with Lou Gilbert (Viva Zapata!; Juliet of the Spirits) as the old man. Goldstein makes lovely use of Chicago locations with plenty of spacious, lingering shots, but it's highly self-consciously arty. Its storytelling skills leave much to be desired; seemingly nothing happens for at least 20 minutes, and by that time many viewers may have given up. Benjamin Manaster co-directed.

DVD Details: Facets Video rescued this obscure American nugget for DVD. As a bonus, Kaufman talks about the film in an on-camera interview.

Starring: Lou Gilbert, Ellen Madison, Nelson Algren, Benito Carruthers, Severn Darden, Tom Erhart, Charles Fischer, Anthony Holland
Written by: Philip Kaufman, Benjamin Manaster
Directed by: Philip Kaufman, Benjamin Manaster
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 85 minutes
Date: January 26, 2006