It is the late 1940s and early 1950s, and much has happened to the family of Polish Jewishimmigrant Sam Krichinsky since he first arrived in America in 1914 and eventually settled in Baltimore.
Television is new. Neighborhoods are changing, with more and more families moving to the suburbs. Wallpaper has been Sam's profession, but his son Jules wants to try his hand at opening a large discount-appliance store with his cousin, Izzy, maybe even do their own commercials on TV.
Jules and his wife, Ann, still live with his parents, but Ann is quietly enduring the way that her opinionated mother-in-law Eva dominates the household. Ann is a modern woman who even learns to drive a car, although Eva refuses to ride with her and takes a streetcar instead.
The family contributes to a fund to bring more relatives to America. Slights, real or imagined, concern the family, as when Jules and Ann finally move to the suburbs, a long way for their relatives to travel. After arriving late and finding a Thanksgiving turkey has been carved without him, Uncle Gabriel is offended and storms out, beginning a feud with Sam.
Sam also cannot understand the methods his grandson Michael's teachers use in school, or why Jules and Izzy have changed their surnames to Kaye and Kirk as they launch their business careers. But when various crises develop, including an armed holdup and a devastating fire, the family gets through the problems together.
Levinson frequently places links between his films that are set in Baltimore. For example, there is an image of a diner under construction, recalling the director's Diner, which also featured a Hudson automobile whose purchase figures in Avalon's plot.[4] The house that the Krichinsky family leaves to move to the suburbs was used as a residence in Tin Men.[4]
Release and reception
Tri-Star Pictures released Avalon on October 5, 1990, initially in six theaters before expanding the following week to 600. Levinson criticized how the studio underpromoted the film and expanded its release too soon, while studio president Michael Medavoy would later defend himself stating "Avalon wasn’t a wide-market movie, and we spent a lot of money to prove we could do it well. Putting it in a lot of theaters maximized the chance of making back our investment. Maybe we guessed wrong, but I don’t think anyone in the business could have squeezed another nickel out of it--or Bugsy, for that matter".[5]
Avalon holds a rating of 86% on Rotten Tomatoes from 28 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10.[6]
