Enemies, A Love Story Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Enemies, A Love Story Blu-ray Movie Review

Herman & Tamara & Yadwiga & Masha.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 26, 2020

Is it possible to make a film which at least references a tragedy like the Holocaust that also offers even a hint of comedy? Certainly there have been arguably noble attempts to at least introduce an element of wry humor, albeit one laced with a certain inevitably bittersweet quality, in films like Life Is Beautiful, a film whose very title suggests a certain ironically comic element once you know what the story entails. But Enemies, A Love Story perhaps ups the ante by crafting a story about people who survived being in concentration camps, with an almost farcical element added courtesy of its focal character, a man named Herman Broder (Ron Silver), who finds his post-War life increasingly convoluted in the romance department. Enemies, a Love Story was culled from a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose very name should indicate that any comedy in this piece is not going to be of the “cheap” variety, which may allay any fears about tonal clashes. The film was co-written, produced and directed by Paul Mazursky of An Unmarried Woman fame, and perhaps ironically Enemies, A Love Story might have been subtitled A Very Married Man, since the quasi-farcical aspect of this film’s story is that Herman shuttles between three different women, two of whom he’s actually already married to (at the same time — more about that in a moment), with a third marriage soon in the offing. (Mazursky of course also was responsible for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, hence my joking "deck" under the review title, above.)

Rather interestingly, at least from a structural standpoint, Enemies, A Love Story doesn’t overtly wallow in the past, though it does begin with a recurring nightmare Herman suffers where he relives the moment he was discovered hiding in a hayloft by Nazis during World War II. The film elides a bit of information to show Herman apparently happily married to a sweet natured, extremely naive woman named Yadwiga (Margaret Sophie Stein). Almost immediately, though, it’s shown that Herman is engaging in at least a bit of subterfuge, since Yadwiga thinks he’s a traveling salesman (something that helps him to account for long absences), when in reality he’s a secret ghostwriter for a prominent New York rabbi named Lembeck (Alan King, giving arguably the broadest performance in the general proceedings). The film also relatively quickly discloses that Herman’s subterfuge extends to his faithfulness to Yadwiga, since he’s engaged in a torrid affair with a mistress named Masha (Lena Olin, Academy Award nominated as Best Supporting Actress for this performance), one of the reasons he lies to Yadwiga about being a traveling salesman, since it gives him plenty of time to spend in largely carnal pursuits with his mistress.

My wife and I had what I might term the devastating privilege of touring the Anne Frank House when we were in Amsterdam last year, and one of the most heart rending things about that tour was a museum exhibit showing the actual “personal” ads placed by Holocaust survivors after the war in desperate attempts to find other surviving relatives. (Otto Frank placed just such an ad searching for his family, before he discovered all but he had perished at various camps.) In Herman’s case, and even though he picks up a copy of The Jewish Forward at one point, the very kind of paper survivors would have used to publish such ads (and, interestingly, where the original Singer novel was first serialized), no such ad is necessary since he presumes that a story he’s been told about his wife having been killed in the camps was true. That is how he ended up marrying Yadwiga, who had in fact been the couple’s maid and who was responsible for hiding Herman in that hayloft, helping to ensure his survival. However, in what in a broader comedy would be an outright farcical element (as in Move Over, Darling), Herman’s wife Tamara (Anjelica Huston, also Academy Award nominated for Best Supporting Actress for this performance) shows up very much alive, albeit wounded both physically and emotionally.

What's kind of bracing about Enemies, A Love Story is that it doesn't take long for everything to spill out more or less in the open, leaving these desperate characters to kind of fend for themselves in emotionally perilous circumstances when they're all in need of some kind of refuge. What's kind of interesting in this regard is how the film surveys not just the interrelationships between Herman and the three women, but between the women themselves. Complications of course ensue (how could they not?), with things coming to a head when Masha insists Herman marry her. There's some interesting if perhaps largely unexamined subtext here, with Yadwiga a non-Jew (if not exactly a classic shiksa), and Tamara and Masha both Jewish survivors. Another passing moment that may not be immediately obvious to non-Jews is the Jewish tradition of naming newborns after someone who has passed, in order perhaps to subliminally suggest a "carrying on" of that person's spirit. That aspect plays into an absolutely fascinating coda, a brief but oddly devastating scene that suggests life does indeed go on, and those still living need to find their own way of dealing with it.

Enemies, A Love Story Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Enemies, A Love Story is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The fact that this is a Sony release, when the film was a Morgan Creek Entertainment production distributed by 20th Century Fox for its theatrical exhibition may seem a little odd, but due to the vagaries of good ol' showbiz, Morgan Creek's catalog ended up with Revolution Studios, which in turn evidently did a new distribution deal with Sony. This is all said in the context of what might be high expectations for this release given the general imprimatur of Sony handling its own catalog titles, expectations that might need to be tempered just a little bit. While there's certainly nothing egregiously horrible here, it doesn't look like there's been much if any restoration done to whatever element was utilized, and there are numerous instances of flecks and specks along with other signs of wear and tear throughout the presentation. During the opening credits (which show some pretty significant wobble, perhaps another clue as to the provenance of the master), several pretty noticeable white specks appear on the black background, and eagle eyed videophiles will be able to spot a number of recurrent issues like that throughout the film. On the plus side, the palette is nicely burnished, though perhaps at least due in part to stylistic choices, a lot of the imagery can be on the soft side. Close-ups reveal rather good fine detail, and in some of the more intimate encounters (sexual or otherwise), Mazursky and cinematographer Fred Murphy do opt for pretty close up coverage of the performers. Some of the outdoor material, notably a sequence in the Catskills, pops rather well and is nicely warm, with excellent detail levels. Grain resolves naturally for the most part, but there are a couple of isolated (and brief) interior moments where things can be on the splotchy yellow side.

Enemies, A Love Story Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Enemies, A Love Story features a fine sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track. As heretical as it may sound, I've been repeatedly on record as stating that I don't always find Maurice Jarre's scores to be that helpful to the films they ostensibly support, but this film features some intentionally ironic sounding klezmer cues, though due to the glut of source cue credits appended to the closing text crawl in this film, I'm frankly not sure how much of what is heard is actually Jarre's own work. That said, the music sounds full bodied and expressive throughout the track. Dialogue is also rendered cleanly and clearly. A few of the accents can get on the thick side, but there are optional English subtitles to help decipher the proceedings.

Enemies, A Love Story Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary is by Paul Mazursky, who doles out a regular supply of anecdotes and background information in an easily conversational style. My favorite anecdote involved him sitting next to Agnieszka Holland at some event, who told him out of the blue she was making a film based on Singer's Enemies, A Love Story. Suffice it to say, she didn't.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:50) is windowboxed and looked slightly anamorphically stretched to me.

Enemies, A Love Story Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Enemies, A Love Story is an intriguing viewing experience, since it subverts so many expectations in its exploration of a group of survivors thrown together probably at least partly against their wills by the vagaries of fate. The film is an actor's showcase, and all of the principal performances here are outstanding. Rather incredibly, Mazursky does manage to find at least a little passing humor in this overall pretty bleak tale, but it's humor that might unavoidably be of the gallows variety. For those interested, Kino Lorber has recently brought out a 1965 thriller called Return from the Ashes, which might make for an interesting double feature with this film, for reasons which will become evident for those who watch them both. Video has a few passing problems, but nothing major, and audio sounds fine on this release, which comes Recommended.