The Angel Levine

The Angel Levine (1970)

If he's an angel, imagine what God is like.

Morris Mishkin is a elderly religious Jew in New York. His wife Fanny is very ill. He's a tailor, but he can't work because his back has given out. He doesn't even have enough money for Fanny's medicine. Finally, a black fellow appears from nowhere in the Mishkin kitchen. He says he's an angel from God, sent to help Mishkin. The black angel is even Jewish, named Alex Levine? But will Morris believe in the angel? And can the angel perform the miracle that he promises?

Date of release
1970-07-28
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
Drama
Director
Ján Kadár

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: New York City

The Angel Levine is a 1970 American drama film directed by Ján Kadár and starring Zero Mostel, Harry Belafonte, Ida Kamińska, Milo O'Shea, and Gloria Foster. It is based on a short story by Bernard Malamud about Morris Mishkin, an elderly, impoverished New York City tailor who becomes unable to work due to health problems. His wife has also been seriously ill for two years, and their situation is now desperate. The tailor's Jewish faith, or lack of it, is challenged when a man calling himself Alexander Levine enters his life, claiming to be his guardian angel. Levine says that he must make the tailor believe in his mission, or fail to earn his angelic wings.

Production

The Angel Levine was brought to the screen by Belafonte, who produced the film as his own return to movies after more than ten years. The story was adapted by Emmy nominated writer Ronald Ribman and Bill Gunn, who had written the satire The Landlord (1970), "a well-received and complex examination of American race relations."

Hal Erickson remarks that while "Bernard Malamud seldom saw his works faithfully transferred to the screen...he issued no complaints over the cinemazation of his Angel Levine."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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