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JOAN MICKLIN SILVER PORTRAYS WORKING WOMEN IN STORIES OF INDEPENCE AND SOLIDARITY THAT QUIETLY DEFY CONVENTION
The films of Joan Micklin Silver are not in and of themselves difficult-if difficult means abstract or assaultive-but they're often about difficult people: people who don't make it easy for others to like or care for them, or who don't accept the help they clearly need. If there's a common characteristic among her protagonists, it might be their diffidence-an odd thing to say about films that are generally so warm. This contrast gives her works their somewhat indefinable tone, falling between offbeat comedies of social behavior and character-driven dramas. And though they usually end with a level of resolution, it often feels precarious and uncertain, buoyed by spontaneous joy or recognition, but quite possibly temporary. In some cases, this layered and uneasy tone led to marketing purgatory, as with her Ann Beattie adaptation Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), which now has a small but devoted following but was bizarrely packaged upon its initial release as a romantic comedy with the title Head Over Heels. By contrast, in the reception of her best-known films, Hester Street (1975) and Crossing Delancey (1988), the impression of genial charm has overshadowed their more complex gestures. A director who is not famous but whose movies are not themselves obscure, Silver occupies an uncertain position among American filmmakers: her films are neither mainstream nor arty; not fashionable, albeit beloved by a select group; recognizably Jewish, but without broad ethnic humor. Her works are neither opaque, nor bizarre, nor self-conscious
enough to be considered true cult classics, but singular and specific enough to fall between the cracks of sweeping narratives of American film history.
If Silver's films don't fit neatly into a broader movement or ethos, it may be because their historical location has yet to be properly situated. What might be gained, for instance, from thinking about Silver as one of several American female directors-including Barbara Loden, Claudia Weill, Kathleen Collins, and Lynne Littman, among others-who emerged in the '70s and '80s? At the time, a crucial juncture for American feminism, their narrative films not only centered on women but also offered implicit models for feminist cinematic spectatorship, whether or not their concerns were...