Joan Micklin Silver (1935-2020)
Saturday, January 2, 2021 at 11:00PM 
by Nathaniel R
A appreciative goodbye to the writer/director Joan Micklin Silver who died on New Years Eve at 85 years of age of vascular dementia. Long before elevating female directors was a thing for the media or the industry, she was out there doing her thing. Imagine the lift for female directors in the 20th century to get not one but several films made with little media attention or social justice support. The NY Times has a fine overview of the type of obstacles she faced.
Silver's directorial debut came in the 1970s with the Jewish drama Hester Street which earned a well deserved Best Actress nomination for Carol Kane and a WGA nomination for Micklin herself for Comedy writing -- though what an odd classification that was for the immigrant drama...
Hester Street (1975)
Finnegan Begin Again (1985)
Crossing Delancey (1988)
Loverboy (1989)
Her other most successful pictures were the tv movie Finnegan Begin Again (1985) which netted Mary Tyler Moore a Best Actress nomination at the CableAce Awards (a long since defunct awards show that disolved after the Emmys starting allowing cable shows to compete in 1988), and the romantic comedy Crossing Delancey which netted its star Amy Irving a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Silver made several other films for both TV and theaters during her career.
Here's a tweet we love getting at the very NY appeal of her movies...
RIP Joan Micklin Silver, who gave us what is probably the most beautifully New York-y scene ever put on film pic.twitter.com/vXw6xo3ZAV
— carly jordan (@carlyforshort) January 2, 2021
Have you seen any of her films?
Reader Comments (15)
I've seen Hester Street and Crossing Delancey. Such a unique voice. She will be missed.
In addition to those recognized titles, I encourage fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald and/or Shelley Duvall to seek out Silver’s magical Bernice Bobs Her Hair.
She did Loverboy? That was a damn good movie. I liked that film. R.I.P. Joan Micklin Silver.
Her movie "Chilly Scenes of Winter" (originally titled "Head Over Heels") is wonderful--a fresh, bittersweet original.
Matt L. > Actually the other way around. It was originally titled Chilly Scenes of Winter, then the studio changed it to Head Over Heels [but, of course]. When it flopped, Silver insisted on changing the ending AND title, and was rereleased as Chilly Scenes of Winter, and it fared better.
Hester Street should be easier to find. It's good. I really liked Crossing Delancey as a kid with the great Sylvia Miles and its opening song, "Come Softly to Me" by The Roches (I had to look it up, yes). I was very into Amy Irving for a while.
I don't know which version I have seen of Head Over Heels/Chilly Whatever but it was visually ugly and mostly boring.
I read she had dementia but Mark Harris said that he just spoke to her.
Hester was financed and distributed by Silver and her husband. Even after it made more than 15x its budget back (and was nominated for best actress and WGA award), Silver still struggled to fund her movies. Delancey got funded because Amy Irving (Spielberg's then-wife) wanted the lead. And then it became a huge hit, grossing more than $100 million in the 80s. Sometimes it's astounding to realize the lengths men would go to keep women out of the director's chair even when it had proved itself to be fiscally worthwhile.
At any rate, RIP Joan Micklin Silver.
I'm sure I've seen Loverboy but can't recall a thing about it. Teenage looking Patrick Dempsey had a couple of fun movies there.
I have definitely seen Hester Street (quite a novelty really), and I've seen more than once Bernice Bobs Her Hair and Crossing Delancey. Both I recall liking a lot, and Bernice was simply terrific with performances I still recall from Shelley Duvall, Veronica Cartwright, Bud Cort, and Dennis Christopher.
I join the others who recommend Hester Street, especially if the Best Actress category is your thing (and why shouldn't it be?!?)
Carol Kane is a lovely unique prescence is Hester Street and Doris Roberts is a scream,it's actually quite a funny movie.
I love "Crossing Delancey" worth watching
Hester Street, Between the Lines, and Chilly Scenes of Winter are the films of hers that I have seen and I have been looking forward to watching more. She really was such a unique, special voice. R.I.P.
Since you brought up the CableACE Awards, don't forget A Private Matter, which managed to get nominated in pretty much every category except Best Director and was sadly overlooked by the time the Emmys rolled around, at a time when those awards discovered HBO in a big way! Joan Micklin Silver made so many beautiful female-centric movies that I think should be required viewing for any film student. I watched Hester Street while in school and am so glad it exists as an Oscar-nominated movie (even though I wish it wasn't in a lineup many consider to be "weak"), with a wonderful early opportunity for Carol Kane to really show her range.
Love Hester Street. Kane and Roberts are terrific in it. RIP.
Ian: The movie is based on Ann Beattie's novel "Chilly Scenes of Winter," so yes, in that sense, the original title of the story is that. But the studio first released the movie under the title "Head Over Heels," it was later changed to the title of the novel upon re-release; Silver decided to lop off the film's final sequence to give the movie (in her opinion and the opinion of many others) a less happy and thus more realistic ending.
Have you seen both versions? I think both work exceedingly well, but I think I prefer the original. I'm often a sucker for movies that end happily.