Summary
Winnebago’s dusty main street, 1910: the Brandeis dry-goods shop exhales camphor and calico, its shelves a fragile synagogue of safety for the only Jewish clan within fifty miles. Molly, eyes like Sabbath candles, counts pennies beside Ferdinand whose cough already smells of graveyard soil; their daughter Fanny folds bolts of muslin into origami futures while Theodore coaxes wolf-notes from a half-size violin, sawing the town’s silence into something that might outlast the Wisconsin winter. Enter the Great Schabelitz—lion-maned virtuoso, pogrom refugee, apostle of Brahms—whose single recital in the Methodist hall becomes an annunciation: the boy’s vibrato is a passport to Dresden’s harmonic cathedrals. Ferdinand’s heart ruptures the next spring; the store becomes collateral, Molly’s hair turns glacier-white overnight, Fanny’s youth is auctioned off stitch by stitch so that Theodore may sail, a golden calf in steerage, toward Old-World splendor. Dresden dazzles him with beer-hall chandeliers and soprano thighs; he weds a sequined mayfly who empties his purse faster than he can fill concert halls. Telegrams arrive like shrapnel: MOTHER DEAD OF SHAME. Theodore—now widower with a mewling infant—crawls back to sister Fanny who has reinvented herself in Chicago’s Loop, a department-store colossus in tailored suits, her heart barricaded behind ledgers. She juggles two suitors: Michael Fenger, married, iron-jawed, a living ledger of repressed desire; Clarence Hyle, boyhood pal turned bohemian painter, all wrists and watercolor sighs. Just as Fanny and Fenger book passage to a Pacific mirage, Theodore’s scribbled note—GOING BACK TO WIFE—slashes the sister’s last artery of obligation. On the gangplank, Clarence’s eyes hold her: choose the self you have never been allowed to be. The ship horn blurs into violin harmonics; the camera lingers on a woman finally authoring her own cadence.
Synopsis
In Winnebago, Wisconsin, the Jewish Brandeis family--Molly, Ferdinand, and their two children Fanny and Theodore--run a modest dry-goods store. Theodore is studying violin and auditions for a famous violinist, The Great Schabelitz, who is giving a local concert. Schabelitz is impressed by the boy's talent and recommends that he plan to study in Dresden, Germany. After Ferdinand dies, the family makes many sacrifices to enable Theodore to study in Dresden, where he eventually marries a worthless chorus girl and causes his mother's death from a broken heart. Although she continues to contribute to Theodore's support, Fanny decides to live her own life and moves to Chicago. There she becomes a highly-efficient businesswoman in a department store, spurred on by her colleague and admirer Michael Fenger, who is trapped in a loveless marriage. A former school friend, Clarence Hyle, also attempts to woo her. Later, Theodore, deserted by his wife, returns from Europe with his baby daughter and comes to live with Fanny. When he eventually becomes a successful performer, he leaves Fanny a message saying that he is returning to his wife. After so much self-sacrifice, Fanny decides to live only for herself and is about to sail to Honolulu with Fenger when Clarence makes her realize that her true happiness lies with him.
