The Return of the Classic Films Obituary Thread

[CBHagman]

15. From 2020: director Joan Micklin Silver, 85

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/14/joan-micklin-silver-obituary-crossing-delancey

A sensitivity to cultural differences, a playful looseness with actors, and a nose for the churn and thrust of interpersonal relationships were among the characteristics of the film-maker Joan Micklin Silver, who has died aged 85 of vascular dementia. She was 40 when she made her debut with Hester Street (1975), the story of a young Russian-Jewish woman arriving in late-19th-century New York only to struggle to match her husband’s aplomb in adapting to their adopted culture.

Shot in black and white and scripted largely in Yiddish with subtitles, the film was self-distributed by her husband, Raphael D Silver, known as Ray, who worked in real estate. He volunteered to produce it after being appalled by the sexist responses his wife received; one studio executive had told her that “women directors are just one more problem we don’t need”. The picture attracted rapturous reviews, recouped its entire $365,000 production costs in five weeks, went on to make nearly $5m and earned an Oscar nomination for its 23-year-old star, Carol Kane.

Silver’s most popular effort was the romantic comedy Crossing Delancey (1988), starring Amy Irving as Izzy, a bookseller whose meddling grandmother, or bubbe, played by the lively Yiddish theatre veteran Reizl Bozyk, hires a matchmaker on her behalf. “Ya look, ya meet, ya try, ya see,” says the blowsy broker (Sylvia Miles), playing Cupid several decades before Tinder. Izzy has her doubts about Sam (Peter Riegert), who runs a stall promising “a joke and a pickle for only a nickel”, but no reasonable viewer would swipe left on the film.

IMDB credits:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0798717/