***Some Spoilers*** Updated version of the 1946 Christmas Classic "It's a Wounderful Life" where here it takes place in the tenement slums and high crime ridden Manhattan Lower East Side instead of the sleepy and picture post-card town of Bedford Falls.
Morris Mishkin, Zero Mostel, had just about had it with life with his wife Fanny, Ida Keminska, bed-ridden with a serious heart ailment his business, Morris' Tailor shop, burned down in a suspected arson fire and worst of all his daughter Ruthie having eloped with a good for nothing gambler and hustler who on top of everything else isn't even Jewish! It's when Morris is just about to do himself in, by him playing in traffic, that a miracle happened. He was saved by the bell, or was it the guy upstairs, by having an angle sent to help him out of his miseries. The Angel Alex Levine played by Harry Belafonte.
Even though he doesn't look Jewish by a long shot, despite his Jewish sounding name, Levine seems well schooled in the Jewish culture and way of life. Even being able to recite, in Hebrew, the Jewish prayer for the breaking of bread at the dinner table! Morris who at first though that the guy-Alex Levine-was either some kind of a nut or even worst break-in burglar soon began to like the guy! Especially when he somehow cured his wife Fanny from her deathly heart ailment. As the movie goes on we soon realize that Levine is a fallen angel from heaven who's out, in the world below, to earn his wings which will put him in good with the big man-God-whom he's on the outs with.
After about the first half hour the movie becomes completely disjointed with Levine not only being seen by Morris, whom he's intended to save, but everyone else he comes in contact with! We even get a gimps of Levine's life before he left the scene, earth, with his former girlfriend Sally, Gloria Foster, who, in him being dead, doesn't seem at all surprised in seeing him!
***SPOILERS*** It's just when Morris starts to believe that Levein is the real deal, an angle sent from heaven to pull his chestnuts out of the fire, that he suddenly disappears like a puff of smoke! With the film, that was so good for the first half, being so hard to follow and understand in the last 45 or so minutes I suspect it was more the result of of a bad editing job then anything else. Levine in fact seemed to be the person who at the beginning of the movie was killed, getting hit by a car, after swiping a woman's fur coat at a Lower East Side delicatessen. It was Morris who alerted the lady who's coat was being swiped which then set off the chain of events for the mugger getting killed in his attempt to flee the scene. If in fact, which I think it was, it was Levine who was the dead mugger it would have made sense for him to come back, as a angle, to pay for his crime by being stuck with helping the very uncooperative Morris! Who made his stay on earth the hell that he was supposed to be in for the life of crime he previously lived there!
Morris Mishkin, Zero Mostel, had just about had it with life with his wife Fanny, Ida Keminska, bed-ridden with a serious heart ailment his business, Morris' Tailor shop, burned down in a suspected arson fire and worst of all his daughter Ruthie having eloped with a good for nothing gambler and hustler who on top of everything else isn't even Jewish! It's when Morris is just about to do himself in, by him playing in traffic, that a miracle happened. He was saved by the bell, or was it the guy upstairs, by having an angle sent to help him out of his miseries. The Angel Alex Levine played by Harry Belafonte.
Even though he doesn't look Jewish by a long shot, despite his Jewish sounding name, Levine seems well schooled in the Jewish culture and way of life. Even being able to recite, in Hebrew, the Jewish prayer for the breaking of bread at the dinner table! Morris who at first though that the guy-Alex Levine-was either some kind of a nut or even worst break-in burglar soon began to like the guy! Especially when he somehow cured his wife Fanny from her deathly heart ailment. As the movie goes on we soon realize that Levine is a fallen angel from heaven who's out, in the world below, to earn his wings which will put him in good with the big man-God-whom he's on the outs with.
After about the first half hour the movie becomes completely disjointed with Levine not only being seen by Morris, whom he's intended to save, but everyone else he comes in contact with! We even get a gimps of Levine's life before he left the scene, earth, with his former girlfriend Sally, Gloria Foster, who, in him being dead, doesn't seem at all surprised in seeing him!
***SPOILERS*** It's just when Morris starts to believe that Levein is the real deal, an angle sent from heaven to pull his chestnuts out of the fire, that he suddenly disappears like a puff of smoke! With the film, that was so good for the first half, being so hard to follow and understand in the last 45 or so minutes I suspect it was more the result of of a bad editing job then anything else. Levine in fact seemed to be the person who at the beginning of the movie was killed, getting hit by a car, after swiping a woman's fur coat at a Lower East Side delicatessen. It was Morris who alerted the lady who's coat was being swiped which then set off the chain of events for the mugger getting killed in his attempt to flee the scene. If in fact, which I think it was, it was Levine who was the dead mugger it would have made sense for him to come back, as a angle, to pay for his crime by being stuck with helping the very uncooperative Morris! Who made his stay on earth the hell that he was supposed to be in for the life of crime he previously lived there!