Cinema: Toot, Toot, Tootseleh

YENTL directed by Barbra Streisand

Screenplay by Jack Rosenthal and Barbra Streisand

The Jews have a word for what it took to make this movie: chutzpah. Barbra Streisand—the producer, director, co-writer and star of Yentl—spent 15 years turning Isaac Bashevis Singer's 20-page story Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy into a 2-hr. 15-min. musical extravaganza. At 41, she dares to impersonate a Lithuanian girleen. She has twisted Singer's story—of a studious imp who dresses up as a boy and contrives to marry her best friend's fiancee—into a moral tale about three victims of circumstance and prejudice....

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