THE IMMIGRANT  is a small personal story, with a handful of characters, given enough care in art direction and cinematography that it has the look of a larger film, reinforcing a period feel to brace the high quality acting.  It’s a tragic drama about the traumatic welcome to a new life in America that fate doles a young Polish woman in 1921.  Tricked upon arrival in Ellis Island, she does what she must to survive and hopefully get her sister out of detention and likely deportation.  Two men figure in her travails, and the story arc brings redemption-after-tribulation to the mix.

Making the painfully believable saga endurable is a wonderful lead performance from the ever-luminous, constantly impressing Marion Cotillard, along with nuanced work from Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner.  Directed and co-written by James Gray, based on his family stories, this is a kind of feminine cousin to America America, a tribute to the crushing reality that millions faced when they made it to New York, after all the terrors of getting that far in the first place.

Cotillard is reminiscent of the magical Maria Falconetti in the silent masterpiece The Passion of Joan Of Arc: a superlative job, overlooked at Oscar time even while the movie did scoop a load of awards elsewhere. The evocative camerawork is from Darius Khonji; the recreation of poverty-row New York of the 20s calls to mind the craftsmanship of The Godfather II, albeit on a smaller scale. Clocking 117 minutes, generating respectable returns of $6,000,000, actually not bad against a $16,500,000 cost, considering that the downbeat nature of the project had limited audience appeal. Not a happy experience, but when you think you have it dialed, the surprises catch you; consistently rich in detail, compassion and that precious thing called dignity. With Maja Wampuszyc, Angela Sarafyan and Dagmara Dominczyk.