The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg . The Boston Phoenix . 02-28-00

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg

DIRECTED BY: Aviva Kempner

REVIEWED: 02-28-00

Aviva Kempner serves up a loving portrait of a man whose Hall of Fame baseball career is matched only by his enduring status as a Jewish folk hero. Born in 1911 to Romanian immigrants in New York, Greenberg went on to become one of the greatest power hitters of all time with the Detroit Tigers in the '30s and '40s -- despite the yearly assaults today's hitters make on the record books, he's still in the Top 10 for most homers and RBIs in a single season. As the most prominent Jewish athlete in America, he also became a national symbol of Jewish pride during the rise of Nazi Germany.

Kempner's film is an ambitious montage of period footage, radio broadcasts, and contemporary interviews. (She interviewed 47 people, from Alan Dershowitz to a hilarious Greenberg groupie.) It never gets too reverential -- we learn that though he wore his cultural identity on his sleeve, Greenberg was not a religious man, that though his work ethic was legendary, he wasn't above a little sign stealing in the heat of a pennant race. And the film's portrait of a time when baseball was played "for no money, in the daylight, on the grass" -- as Greenberg puts it in interview footage -- is, of course, priceless.

--Sean Richardson

Film Vault Suggested Links
Year of the Horse
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
Roam Sweet Home

Rate this Film
If you don't want to vote on a film yet, and would like to know how others voted, leave the rating selection as "Vote Here" and then click the Cast Vote button.