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Barbra Streisand: Yentl
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Synopsis: Barbra Streisand's directorial debut, Yentl, is a musical adaptation of a story by the beloved Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. Yentl (Streisand) is a young woman who wants nothing more than to study religious scripture. She is denied that possibility because she is a woman. She moves, passesRead More
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Streisand might ... have touched too personal a nerve with the ongoing first-act discourse on her traumas in years of psychoanalysis. In between songs, Yentl kvetched to a series of "doctas" about her troubles with the opposite sex. Viennese doctor shtick has been dead for years, and Streisand might have been advised to omit it. But more problematic was the tone, which set the audience at odds with the performer. In becoming more intimate about herself, Streisand was, in effect, pushing the house away.
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With her directorial debut Yentl in 1983 Barbra became the first woman to produce, direct, write and star in a featured film. She's ... the first woman to win a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony. She's the best-selling female recording artist of all time, a noted philanthropist, an outspoken Democrat and a champion of AIDS research.
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In 1983, Streisand became the first woman to ever produce, direct, write, and star in a major motion picture for the film, Yentl. The film took Streisand fifteen years to complete. She had written the screen play back in the 1970s. The movie is definitely feministic, celebrating women empowerment.
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Streisand would take yet another leap in her creative life when she decided to direct, produce, and star in Yentl in 1983. Filmed in Eastern Europe, Yentl was the story of a woman masquerading as a man to get orthodox Jewish religious education. The film earned more than $35 million, but it would be four years before she appeared in another film.
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YENTL proved to be not only a huge personal success for Streisand, but ... in a broader context, a triumph for female filmmakers during an exceedingly fallow creative period. Whereas in 1916, there were 12 female directors making films, 67 years later, in 1983, while Streisand was shooting YENTL, she was one of only two women shooting a major motion picture. "I felt pressure working on YENTL because it was one of the first big budget movies made by a woman, and I thought, ‘My God, if this doesn’t succeed in some way, then it’ll hurt a lot of female directors in the future.’" Fortunately, for those future directors, she won Golden Globes for both Best Director and Best Picture.
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Yentl