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Hester Street, Crossing Delancey and Chilly Scenes of Winter [2]
directed by Joan Micklin Silver
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By
Published: Apr 14, 2011
Category: Drama [4]
Guest Butler Barbara Finkelstein is the author of Summer Long-a-coming [5]. She has written some memorable pieces for Head Butler: In Defense of Long Books [6] and The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother [7]. She is at work on “Repenting at Leisure,” a novel.
Whenever I read a movie review by somebody I don't know, I wish I could ask him where he's coming from. Does he love Harry Potter, for example. I don't. You'd have to give me five thousand dollars plus carfare to make me go out and see “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." And if you think I'm just some bluestocking who hates pop culture, don't even get me started on Merchant Ivory. For a second tortured viewing of “Jefferson in Paris,” you'd have to hook me up to an IV drip of Dexadrine.
Here's where I'm coming from.
I wish every movie I saw had the effect on me that director Joan Micklin Silver's “Hester Street,” “Crossing Delancey” and “Chilly Scenes of Winter” have whenever I see them (three times each so far). I love these movies. They're all about having fun and how having fun is more American than the Protestant work ethic. Of course fun and work are connected. You work to have money so that you can spend it in your leisure time. Yet the harder Joan Silver's anti-heroes and anti-heroines work to have fun, the more fun morphs into divorce, bad temper or loneliness. If you're a sucker for this combination of joy and heartbreak, you and I are on the same page.
First, there's Jake (Steven Keats) in “Hester Street,” a story about the irreconcilable differences between immigrants who assimilate into American life and those who retain some of the old country's old ways. He is the most poignant of Silver's fun seekers -- and the character I sympathized with the least when I saw the movie in 1975. At twenty, it was easy for me to write Jake off as a Lower East Side yahoo who couldn't look past his wife's homely wig to the refinement of her character. And it's one thing for somebody like Jonathan Swift to take a swipe at religious doctrine, quite another for greenhorn Jake to treat a shtetl home boy like a yutz, as he does in a couple of scenes.
Fast forward a few years and I now find Jake's situation poignant. He knows that the fun he seeks -- the baseball games, the dance halls, the pretty girls -- can't mask the failings of his own character. In the scene where he divorces his wife, Jake's self-knowledge is written all over his face. For me it's the saddest part of the movie, and it's the moment in which the late Steven Keats brings all his cinematic brilliance to the role. Jake understands that he is giving up a lovely woman because she takes life seriously and he doesn't want to. And what does he end up with? Marriage to a prettier woman who takes life every bit as seriously as dowdy Wife Number One. I cannot get over how powerful this movie is. (To buy the DVD from Amazon, click here [3]. To rent and watch now, click here. [8]To buy and watch now, click here [9].)
Next, Isabelle (Amy Irving) in “Crossing Delancey,” a story about finding Mr. Right. By day Isabelle works in one of Manhattan's hip bookstores -- remember them? -- and hobnobs at night with the literati of the late 1980s. One of these bad boy writers is Anton, a glib novelist played by the wonderful Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé. Anton is the kind of cad you can spot from a mile away --- unless you are the kind of good girl who visits her grandmother down on the Lower East Side and who aspires to a more thrilling life than the one she's been dealt. When I saw “Crossing Delancey” in 1988, I thought Isabelle's alternate love interest wasn't very plausible. What thrill was Isabelle going to get from Sam Posner (Peter Riegert), a regular (albeit adorable) schmo who sells barrel pickles on Delancey Street? How could she forgo the exciting literary life that men like Anton promise?
Let's just say that with the passage of years, we ladies learn that the Antons of the world promise all kinds of things but they rarely deliver even a pickle. As Isabelle sees in the nick of time, fun with Anton is hell. (To buy the DVD from Amazon, click here [10]. To rent and watch now, click here [11]. To buy and watch now, click here [9].)
Finally, Charles (John Heard) in “Chilly Scenes of Winter,” a story based on the Ann Beattie novel about the unrequited love of a twentysomething guy for a young married woman. When I saw it in 1979, I couldn't understand why Laura (Mary Beth Hurt) wasn't as crazy about Charles as he was about her. For one, he is incredibly handsome, especially compared to Laura's husband Ox. When I watched the movie this week, though, I understood Laura's ambivalence -- and understood even better Charles' obsession with her.
Charles works in a Salt Lake City government office, a dreary place that is the white collar equivalent of the sweatshop in Hester Street. When he meets Laura there, she is the fun-loving contrast to everything in adult life that is such a bore.
The problem is she's just not that into Charles. "You have this exalted view of me and I hate it," Laura tells him. His response? "But we have so much fun together." It's no coincidence that the soundtrack to Charles' life is Janice Joplin's “Get It While You Can.” In "Chilly Scenes," life is a grind and fun is fleeting. The scene here appeared in "Head Over Heels," a version of the movie with a controversial happy ending. (This movie is, sadly, unavailable on DVD. To watch it right now on Netflix, click here [12].)
So now you know where I am coming from. In film, I love the exquisite pain of self-delusion that dissolves into the redemptive sorrow of maturity. Get hold of these three movies, even if you are a fan of Harry Potter or Merchant Ivory. Despite our differences, something tells me that Joan Micklin Silver will make friends of us all.