Crossing Delancey was the fourth feature film directed by Joan Micklin Silver, and her second film about the New York Jewish-American experience. Silver had moved to New York from Cleveland, but after writing and directing several award-winning short films she was unable to make the leap to features. Instead, her husband raised money and produced his wife's feature directing debut, Hester Street (1975), about Jewish immigrants living in the lower east side in the last years of the nineteenth century. The indie film was well-received, and Joan Micklin Silver's career was launched.
Like all of Silver's films, Crossing Delancey is perfectly cast with a vibrant mix of moderately well-known actors and unfamiliar ones, who all inhabit their roles. The daughter of a theater director and an actress, Amy Irving made her film debut in 1976's Carrie and was nominated for an Academy Award® as best supporting actress for Yentl (1983). Her performance in Crossing Delancey earned Irving a Golden Globe nomination as best actress. Peter Riegert's easy charm and everyman looks make him ideal as Izzy's unlikely Prince Charming.
The grandmother in Crossing Delancey could have been the offspring of the main characters in Silver's Hester Street. She is played by Reizl Bozyk, a Polish-born veteran of the Yiddish stage, making a delightful film debut at the age of seventy-three. Bozyk had been performing since the age of five in Europe, and she and her husband were touring in Argentina when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. The family made their way to New York, where they worked for decades in Yiddish theater. Bozyk did not play her first stage role in English until after she appeared in Crossing Delancey. She never made another film, but continued to work on stage until shortly before her death in 1993.
Sylvia Miles had received two supporting actress Oscar nominations for playing aging, hard-edged, sexually-voracious women in Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Farewell My Lovely (1975). In Crossing Delancey, as a motormouth Jewish matchmaker in cahoots with Bubbie, Miles took off her girdle and delivered a performance that's pure fun. Look for David Hyde Pierce (billed as "David Pierce"), who later played Niles Crane on the television series Frazier, as Izzy's co-worker, and Suzzy Roche of the musical group the Roches as Izzy's friend Marilyn, whom she fixes up with Sam on a blind date. The Roches also contributed several songs to the soundtrack.
While a few critics found Crossing Delancey a formulaic rom-com, others liked the film's sense of place and the charm of the characters. Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times called it "at once hip and romantic; wittily sophisticated and unabashedly affectionate; a love poem to all of New York." In the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote that the film managed to "combine a down-to-earth, contemporary outlook with the dreaminess of a fairy tale."
Director: Joan Micklin Silver
Producer: Raphael Silver, Michael Nozik
Screenplay: Susan Sandler, based on her play
Cinematography: Theo Van de Sande
Editor: Rick Shaine
Costume Design: Rita Ryack
Art Direction: Dan Leigh, Leslie E. Rollins
Music: Paul Chihara, additional songs by the Roches
Principal Cast: Amy Irving (Isabelle Grossman), Peter Riegert (Sam Posner), Jeroen Krabbe (Anton Maes), Reizl Bozyk (Bubbie), Sylvia Miles (Hannah Mandelbaum), George Martin (Lionel), John Bedford Lloyd (Nick), Amy Wright (Ricky), Fay Grant (Candyce), Suzzy Roche (Marilyn), Deborah Offner (Karen)
97 minutes
by Margarita Landazuri
