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?