Bebe Neuwirth in "Liberty Heights."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Ben Foster, Adrien Brody and Joe Mantegna Director: Barry Levinson Rated: R, with profanity and sexual innuendo Length: 127 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Feb. 4, 2000) -- It's 1954, and a sign on the fence surrounding a Baltimore municipal swimming pool says, "No Jews, Dogs or Colored Allowed."

For Jewish teenager Ben Kutzman and his friends, the sign raises questions about the billing: Why are the Jews listed first?

Their casual, matter-of-fact debate never resolves the question -- but it sets the tone for Liberty Heights, a marvelous film about racism, anti-semitism and the first cracks in America's segregated society.

That it's cushioned in an affectionate and funny coming-of-age tale only adds to its impact.

Liberty Heights is Barry Levinson's latest "Baltimore" movie, the fourth in the loosely autobiographical series in which the veteran director examines his hometown roots. Diner is the 1982 gem that launched Levinson's career; the other two Baltimore movies are Avalon and Tin Men.

Though the character names are different, Liberty Heights plays like a prequel to Diner, as if it catches the young men of that film when they're still boys. (The original luncheonette even makes a cameo appearance.)

In Liberty Heights, Levinson remembers Baltimore life as a Jewish teenager in the mid-'50s, when the Jews lived here, the blacks lived there and the WASPS lived hither and yon.

It's been drummed into Ben (Ben Foster) that there are two kinds of people in the world: "the Jewish kind and the other kind." But as he and his friends begin to expand beyond their neighborhood, they are filled with curiosity for the Gentiles they meet.

Ben's older brother, Van (Adrien Brody), even finds himself falling hard for a blonde, blue-eyed Gentile goddess (Carolyn Murphy). But that's nothing compared to the shock that's about to confront the Kurtzman family: Ben is becoming intrigued with a gentle, sweet black girl named Sylvia.

Thanks to the recent integration rulings of the Supreme Court, she's become the first black student in Ben's school -- and is certainly the first black person Ben's ever known.

Unbeknownst to his mother or father (or to the girl's equally wary parents) Ben and Sylvia develop a friendship that's cemented when Sylvia introduces Ben to records by wonderful black performers like Big Joe Turner, James Brown and Redd Foxx. The new young friends even agree to meet at a James Brown concert -- even though Ben and a friend turn out to be the only white people in the theater.

Levinson also fills Liberty Heights with amusing anecdotes about Ben's family, often revolving around the father's "secret" profession. Dad (Joe Mantegna) gets a lot of mysterious phone calls at dinner time, prompting his puzzled kids to ask, "What does Dad do for a living?"

We know, of course, that he manages a rundown burlesque theater and has ties to Baltimore's numbers rackets.

Dad's profession and Ben's budding romance eventually cross paths in a serio-comic kidnapping sequence. It's a rare instance of Liberty Heights going a bit too far.

But far more often, the entertaining film gets it right, from the fumbling romance of adolescents, to the revolutionary influence of black music on a generation of white youngsters, to the ripping down of signs that tried to limit who's allowed to jump into the neighborhood swimming pool.