Magnificent performance by the leading actors, and even supporting roles. Incredible set, photography, costumes, script, direction, you name it. A true chef d'oeuvre and a feast for the senses. Cotillard is out of this world in almost every scene she appears in, I would not be surprised at all if she sealed an Oscar next year, or at least a nomination. Phoenix had an outstanding performance in this emotionally charged brilliantly written and directed movie about the very depths of human nature, lust, love, greed, survival, good and evil. Renner was great too, within the frame of his role, with some unexpected events as the story unfolds. This is not a movie where you can predict exactly what will happen next, you just sit back and live this amazing movie experience and thank God such great pictures are still made. A couple of hours of my life very well spent.

The storyline is tragic but light, it's the antithesis of a traditional tears-provoking heavy story. the lightness allows us to feel the intense and paradoxical personalities of cotillard, Joaquin phoenix and Jeremy Renee. Marion simply used her eyes to manifest ewa's vulnerabilities and amazing surviving tenacity, admittedly shes a timid and innocent soul with a face that's probably too beautiful for her own good but enough to save her from the borderline of deportation. The first echelon of her character is a caring sister who will sell her dignity to protect her. Then we see the stubbornness and amazing grace of her in the theater, surving among the jealousy coworkers and even maintaining her christianitybeing a prostitute. But Marion's character development is naturally not as multiple as Joaquin phoenix's. we see a self-loathing scumbag 'gentleman', who is capable of denying his own affection toward ewa to make life ahead, everything that matters seem to do with money and this is not his fault. Exteriorly hes the charming and uncanny businessman drifting between the line of legality, bribing cops to feed his exotic girls business. Interiorly he just cannot evade from his intense possessiveness and madness of ewa, he cannot stand a single moment of ewa being with Orlando, because he knows ewa would never love him back, or he is deeply diffident of his own life and line of work, hes trying but doesn't believe he can provide protection to her. He pictured his cousin, the Orlando magician a bright version of him, casually charming and easygoing, and most importantly, with an overboard career and ewa's love. Without any doubt the self-denying prolixity and growing affection of Marion makes phoenix's role more juicy and expressive and present us the luxurious outbreak(the moment he sent ewa away). With his immaculate deliverance, Bruno Weiss is alive and make us all reminiscent of somebody. The tragic story does not seem to matter that much to me, Im simply more interested in this conflicting figure. But above all, I think the most noticeable merit of this incredible film is its cinematography, every single frame is literally an oil painting with a self explanatory emotion. Sometimes is exotically vintage(scenes in theater) with this pleasant thespian old-school traits, and sometimes its dark boldness give us the synaesthesia of desolation and frigidity of 1920 new york city.in this perspective, the immigrant is an art piece, it makes those films which use background sceneries to escalate emotions and win critic's attention look like drama school boy production.

It is beyond belief that a word like "masterpiece" could be applied to a movie as bad as this one. "The Immigrant" is beyond awful. The script is banal, and at times so bad it makes you wince. The direction is strictly paint by the numbers and would be be an insult to even the most provincial film school. This movie does not have a single saving grace- not a single scene,nor a single line worth remembering. Not even one shot even remotely interesting! The performance by the leading man is laughable. As for the heroine, she should perhaps stick to silent films.

What a beautiful story it was, a sad story of that girl Ewa, full of hope arriving in a strange country with the believe that she and her sister will be welcomed by their family! And the desperation and fear when bit by bit her hope and faith gets challenged by the bitterness of "the American dream", the bitterness of being immigrants without money or relatives, connections... Marion is amazing, she acts with her eyes, her face tells it all, she actually doesn't need words... She makes Ewa a very fragile looking "girl" but with an amazing survival-instinct .. Joacquin was charming, frightening, sad, and at the end pitiful..a very dark character, despicable and yet tragic... When Jeremy comes into the story, his character adds a lot of tension with great interaction with Joacquin and Marion; repressed emotions, boyish charm , impulsiveness combined with darkness. He was really really excellent, I loved his performance.. Gray did an awesome job by building up the story the way he did, with very beautiful images, images in those amazing soft yellow ocher colors , that show us a world of those who are "damned " with very rare beacons of light... The end scene, that ending shot , was so amazing, so beautiful ! And I loved the soundtrack.

"The Immigrant", James Gray's newest film, while retaining some of the gritty dark-crime dramatics of his previous work, feels like a radical departure. Mainly because its an Ellis Island-era period movie set 100 years ago, and because its observed through the eyes of a female protagonist and her struggle against permanent blight and the inherent depression of the situational times. Fleeing the brutalities of Trotsky's Red Army, Polish Ewa (Marion Cotillard) and her sickly sister arrive in New York cira 1920. When her sister is quarantined and both are threatened with deportation, Ewa is taken notice and saved by the faux-sensitive brothell pimp Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) and blackmailed into prostitution. Just when Ewa may succumb to the sort of drab, bleak life that she was trying to allude, Bruno's cousin Orlando the Magician (Jeremy Renner) shows up and both men via their own quirky methods try to light a fire in the heart of the pretty foreigner. In her best part since "Rust and Bone", Cotillard is Oscar worthy in a showy albeit poetic performance (made all the more impressive that she speaks Polish throughout most of it). Phoenix is superb as usual, as the repressed and impotent man who wants to think he's in charge. But Renner steals the show. Right when you think the movie is going to slide under the weight of the misery of its subject, his Orlando appears like a glowing gaslight of fun amongst the dim rooms and crowded corridors. Like his work in "American Hustle", its criminal that his spritely performance here will go unrewarded and under the radar. Although the universal tale of Gray's film isn't exactly something we haven't seen before (from Kazan's bold "America, America" to Ron Howard's putrid "Far and Away") "The Immigrant" presents a rare and thoughtful experience, one in which we can learn something about the lives of long ago as well as our own.

A complex, nuanced, deeply affecting tale of morality and survival in 1920's New York. This is American cinema at it's finest. Nothing is black/white or good/evil in James Gray's films, instead we see intensely emotional portraits of real people struggling for happiness. Again, religion plays a central role in his work and the message, at least to me, seems to be: there is no god, there is only you. Somehow Marion Cotillard keeps getting better and better and digging deeper into her characters. She is far and away the best actress out there and continues to work with the finest filmmakers. Her confession scene in this movie was stunning, beautiful- the best shot of the year. When the credits rolled i wasn't sure what i was feeling but i knew it was worthy of deep contemplation. Pure class, pure cinema.

source: The Immigrant

It's, in few words, an antithesis of the classic American Dream film: segregation, racism, corruption, pimping. A Jewish German that slaves polish women; a devoted catholic family that allows their very own parents feel hunger and cold outside in the street; a police department corrupted, moralist and ultraviolent; a filthy, cloudy and cold New York City in the 20's plenty of vicious people and thugs, heartless and indolent. Summarizing, an ugly mirror of this hidden reality. A puritanical society that, in one hand puts opportunity and hope, and in the other hand segregates and dehumanizes. Perhaps this was the reason because the film wasn't nominated to Oscar. It isn't a politically correct movie in the nation of child-migration crisis.

The movie plot shows how difficult time the immigrants were going through. Great plot and good casting. Must see movie.

This film touched my heart unlike any other film because of the realism & the impact of the characters on each other. In the end the right things happens, as it should.