Film Review: THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ (Canada 1974) ****

Director: Ted Kotcheff

Writers: Mordecai Richler (screenplay), Mordecai Richler (novel)

Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Micheline Lanctôt, Jack Warden

Review by Gilbert Seah

 It has been a long spell (thanks to its recent restoration) since the Canadian classic THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ got a release again on the big screen. The film is the autobiography of the author, Mordecai Richler based on his best selling novel of the same name.

The film is the story of Duddy (pronounced doo-dee) Kravitz (Richard Dreyfuss), a brash, restless young Jewish man growing up poor in Montreal, Canada. His taxi driver father Max (Jack Warden) and his rich uncle Benjy (Joseph Wiseman) are very proud of Duddy’s older brother Lenny, whom Benjy is putting through medical school. Only his grandfather (Zvee shows the motherless Duddy any attention. But Duddy rises the ranks.

There is a scene in which an old Jewish bearded man says that…