Thoughts on Crossing Delancey

 

via Giphy/Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

"'Izzy dear, it's women like you who make the world liquid and even, still in beauty born.' *likes that*"

Late in Crossing Delancey, it hit me. Isabelle Grossman (Amy Irving), a Jewish-American New Yorker with a small army of girlfriends, clout in the literary world and not one, but three men she could conceivably end up with, isn't just fascinating in her own right. She also feels like a more realistic, ostensibly less shallow version of Carrie Bradshaw. Delancey, adapted by Susan Sandler from her play and directed by Joan Micklin Silver, is perhaps best remembered as the most overt Jewish romantic comedy. It should also be recognized as an achievement in documenting the time when a single woman is apparently supposed to feel the appeal and/or obligation of settling down. Find a man, Bubbe (Reizl Bozyk) advises her granddaughter.

"I am a happy person. I have everything! I have a rent-controlled apartment people would kill for. Do you have any idea how much that apartment'd go for on the open market? Maybe $1,500 a month. ... I have a wonderful, wonderful job. Guess who I called the other day? Picked up the phone and called on his private number. Isaac Singer. You know Isaac Bashevis Singer? He won the Nobel Prize! I called him on his unlisted number. He knows me! I know lots of famous writers and publishers and editors. I organize the most prestigious reading series in New York. Me! I do it! And I have plenty of friends, lots of women who are doing tremendous things with their lives and don't need a man to feel complete. It's not like I'm going to say no if someone walks into my life tomorrow. I'm not cancelling out that possibility. But Bubbe, please, listen to me! I am not, I repeat not, holding my breath!"

"A professor once said -- a college professor, 'No matter how much money you got, if you're alone, you're sick.'"

Liberated enough to have what appears to be a friends with benefits relationship with married Nick (John Bedford Lloyd), confident (or is it assimilated?) enough to aspire for the body and soul of European author Anton (Jeroen Krabbé) and human enough to realize (with help from "Some Enchanted Evening" and later, "It Had to Be You") she's in love with Lower East Side pickle merchant Sam (Peter Riegert), Izzy lives a life that even her romcom contemporaries would envy. I think what I found most refreshing about Delancey is that Izzy keeps her self-respect. She might want Anton, but when it's apparent that he doesn't want her in the same way (he wants her as a secretary and apparent go-to fuck buddy), she's out of there. Actually, nobody in Delancey is pathetic. Think about how badly Hollywood could have done with Marilyn (Suzzy Roche).

"Here's my phone number. You look like a nice guy. You want to call me, call me. You don't? Fine. I'm a good person. I don't smoke. I don't have any health problems. Um ... I'm very easy to get along with. And underneath all that information, you will also find a deeply romantic woman."

Reviewing Delancey, Hal Hinson observed that "The movie seems to suggest things about women -- for example, that without men they have no ability to define their lives -- that would have raised a red flag if they had come from a man." I don't see it that way. I see this as a movie that says romance is something that anyone, man or woman, needs. Silver and Sandler devote most of their attention to Izzy, but there is also beauty and poignancy in the depths of Sam's feelings. As he tells Izzy, he previously only ever humored Mrs. Mandelbaum the matchmaker (Sylvia Miles). That is, until Sam saw Izzy's photo. Later, after being put through an emotional wringer by Izzy, Sam's still there. A schmuck? Maybe. But a schmuck in love.

"I really bought this. I thought, well, this is really gonna be great. This is what I'm waiting for. You don't know how nuts I was about tonight. I was off the ground. Nobody could talk to me. I made wrong change all day. I was so happy I was gonna see you tonight, I made a special broche for the occasion. I said the prayer for the planting of new trees. Don't ask me why. ... *kisses Izzy* ... 'How should I talk to Isabelle?'"

*Izzy and Sam kiss again, long, passionately, with her holding him*

Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- "... give your mouth a rest, it will thank you."

-- Box Office: Grossing nearly $16.3 million on a $4 million budget, this opened wideish at No. 6.

-- Awards Watch: Irving was nominated for the Golden Globe, losing to Melanie Griffith.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "Unqualified pleasure ... hip and romantic ... wittily sophisticated and unabashedly romantic," Sheila Benson declared. "The people in this movie have intelligence in their eyes, but their words are defined by the requirements of formula comedy," according to Roger Ebert. "Has its charms, but they are of a highly perishable sort," Hinson wrote. "The more you think about it, the more mixed your feelings become."

-- Critic's Corner, Amy: Delancey featured her strongest movie performance to date, Desson Howe wrote. "(She) puts a deliberate spin on what could have been mere snobbish deliberation. She makes her transformation an unexpected delight." Benson: "Delicately skillful ... she looks breathtaking, her cat's eyes still unfathomable and mysterious."

-- Hey, It's ...!: David Hyde Pierce (billed as "David Pierce") and Rosemary Harris (credited for a special appearance).

-- Hey, It's the 1980s!: Bubbie hangs onto packages and such, including a shopping bag dating from Ed Koch's 1982 run for New York governor. Cecelia (Claudia Silver) consults the September 1987 issue of Interview. Finally, a real life example. This was Bozyk's only film. Benson suggested that she could have made an Olympia Dukakis-style transition from veteran theater performer to movie character actress.

-- Fanservice Junction: Candyce (Faye Grant) wears a garter belt and stockings with her bra and panties.

-- "Oh my god. The return of Annie Hall."

-- Next: Married to the Mob. On deck: Bull Durham.