Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1979 • United States
Starring John Heard, Mary Beth Hurt, Peter Riegert
The trailblazing Joan Micklin Silver—one of only a handful of women to direct a film for a major Hollywood studio in the 1970s—digs fearlessly into the psychology of a thorny relationship in this anti–romantic comedy, based on Ann Beattie’s best-selling novel, about lovelorn civil servant Charles (John Heard) and his married-but-separated coworker Laura (Mary Beth Hurt). Months after their affair has ended, Charles is haunted by memories as he desperately attempts to rekindle a love that perhaps never was. Switching deftly between past and present, Micklin Silver guides this piercing deconstruction of male wish-fulfillment fantasy beyond standard movie-romance tropes into something more complicated and cuttingly truthful.
Up Next in Season 1
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Between the Lines
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1977 • United States
Starring John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Jeff GoldblumInspired by director Joan Micklin Silver’s time working at New York’s storied alt weekly the “Village Voice,” this unsung gem of 1970s slice-of-life seriocomedy offers an incisive, bitterswe...
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Hester Street
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1975 • United States
Starring Steven Keats, Carol Kane, Dorrie KavanaughJoan Micklin Silver’s remarkable feature debut is a vivid, lovingly detailed evocation of the late-nineteenth-century Jewish Lower East Side built around a luminous, Academy Award–nominated...
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Bernice Bobs Her Hair
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1976 • United States
Starring Shelley Duvall, Bud Cort, Veronica CartwrightAdapted from the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald—a literary landmark that all but defined the mores of 1920s Jazz Age youth—this PBS-produced short film stars the wonderfully idiosync...
