Taglines: You’re only young once, but you remember forever.
Liberty Heights movie storyline. In the fall of 1954, the Kurtzmans, a Jewish family, live in Forest Park, a suburban neighborhood in northwest Baltimore. Nate, the father, runs a burlesque theater, and engages in a numbers racket. His wife Ada is a housewife. Van, the older son, attends the University of Baltimore, and Ben is in his senior year in high school.
Ben meets Sylvia, an African-American girl, who begins attending his school after the district has been integrated. Ben immediately starts to develop feelings towards Sylvia, and introduces himself. They become close based on a mutual love for Little Richard, James Brown, jazz, and black comedians. Sylvia’s father, an affluent doctor, disapproves of their relationship and forbids them to see one another.
On Halloween, Ben dresses up as Adolf Hitler, which shocks his parents greatly, and he’s forbidden to go in public wearing it. Van and his friends head over to a party in a predominantly bourgeois, gentile section of town. He is attracted to a mysterious blonde woman. A fight between one of Van’s buddies and a gentile erupts over his jewishness and Trey, one of the party-goers, drunkenly crashes his car into the house. Van must leave the mystery woman.
Liberty Heights is a 1999 comedy-drama by writer-director Barry Levinson. The film is a semi-autobiographical account of his childhood growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s. It is the fourth of Levinson’s four “Baltimore Films” set in his hometown during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: Diner (1982), Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990), and Liberty Heights (1999). Two Liberty Heights soundtracks were released on January 4, 2000: one of the score by Andrea Morricone and one of the music appearing in the film.
Liberty Heights (1999)
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Starring: Adrien Brody, Bebe Neuwirth, Joe Mantegna, Ben Foster, Orlando Jones, Rebekah Johnson, David Krumholtz, Justin Chambers, Vincent Guastaferro, Kiersten Warren
Screenplay by: Barry Levinson
Production Design by: Vincent Peranio
Cinematography by: Christopher Doyle
Film Editing by: Stu Linder
Costume Design by: Gloria Gresham
Set Decoration by: William A. Cimino
Art Direction by: Alan E. Muraoka
Music by: Andrea Morricone
MPAA Rating: R for crude language and sex-related material.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: November 17, 1999
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