Thoughts on Georgia, Georgia

    On The Black Film Archive, I watched Georgia, Georgia, a 1972 drama directed by Stig Björkman, and starring Diana Sands, Dirk Benedict, and Minnie Gentry. The film focuses on both Sands as Georgia Martin, a singer touring Stockholm, and being pressured to speak on behalf of Black people in Sweden as a Black celebrity, and not wanting to be tokenized or expected to speak for the whole Black experience; and the experiences of Vietnam war deserters, with both Michael (Benedict), a white deserter who works as a photographer in Sweden, and Bobo (Terry Whitmore, a real-life deserter who wrote a 1971 memoir about his experience in the Vietnam War), a Black war deserter who wants Georgia to advocate for Black deserters in Sweden.

    The film was written by Maya Angelou, and Georgia, Georgia is known as the first known film production for a screenplay written by a Black woman. The film is notable for being centered on a Black woman figuring out her identity and challenging race relations, and Sands, who would tragically die at age 39 from cancer the following year, is great in portraying this complex role, with a lot of grace and charm and poise. And the early 1970s fashions she wore, like her dresses and coats, all looked fabulous. 

    Unfortunately, the rest of the movie drags in its 90 minutes, and it feels weak and amateurish in its production, despite the talent involved. The Black Film Archive describes the film as "visually disjointed as it doesn't wade into the nuances of being a Black woman which is essential to this film," and I agree. It's trying to both be a character study of a Black woman singer who is questioned on her Blackness by both white and Black people, and also trying to be a political commentary on defectors of the Vietnam War, and it doesn't really come together well, it feels stronger when it focuses more on Sands' character and her romance with Michael, as well as her relationship with her mother figure Mrs. Anderson (Gentry), who is controlling and disapproves of the interracial relationship. And if Maya Angelou had directed the film and kept it more in focus of Georgia and her journey, it would have been more interesting and insightful.

    I'm glad I watched it to check it out, and to see the streaming options on The Black Film Archive, which has a collection of films from the 1910s-1990s of obscure Black films that have been digitized and preserved for cultural and historical significance.

Thoughts on Crossing Delancey

     On Criterion, I watched the 1988 romantic comedy Crossing Delancey, directed by Joan Micklin Silver and adapted by Susan Sandler from her play of the same name. The film starred Amy Irving as Isabelle, a woman who works for an old bookstore in New York City, and mingles with the high-class literari, who she admires and wants to be part of their circle. She comes from an Lower East Side Jewish background, and regular visits her Yiddish-speaking Bubbe, Ida (Reizl Boyzk, a New York stage actress of Yiddish theater whose only film role was this movie), who lives in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood on the Lower East Side, who is pressuring her granddaughter to get married, despite her protests that she is happy as a single, independent woman. Ida hires a matchmaker (Sylvia Miles), and with Isabelle's hesitant agreeance, she sets up a meeting with Isabelle and Sam (Peter Riegert), a small business owner who runs a pickle stand.

    Isabelle is polite to Sam, who is more of a nice, down to earth guy, but she turns him down because she is more interested in the Dutch-American author Anton Maes (Jeroen Krabbe), who represents the more cosmopolitan, intellectual lifestyle that she wants. Sam seems too "working-class" for her, as well as seeming too close to her Jewish roots and too close to home. Yet, Isabelle is caught between the two of them, figuring out what she wants and dealing with both men, and coming to terms with her own interest in love while still maintaining her independence.

    I really loved this movie. Amy Irving was fantastic in it, as having this city woman glamour to her that seemed stylish and attainable and cool, and I liked how she and Peter Riegert had such great chemistry with each other, where their conversations feel warm and realistic, and the film, as a romantic comedy, can feel more like a character study of people than just a light movie with caricatures. The movie is very 1980s in a old-school New York way, with Isabelle talking about living in her rent-controlled apartment and saying how cheap it is compared to others paying $1500 for their apartments (which, in 2025, would be considered cheap today for New York City), and Ida being a lifer in New York City and a part of the old Yiddish part of NYC that isn't around as much anymore, a person from another time. 

    Reizl Bozyk was a total scene-stealer in this film, and a really bright and funny presence who added so much character and lived-in experience as a star performer in the Yiddish theatre world. Though this was her only film role, I'm glad it's preserved for a mainstream audience to see how talented and wonderful she was.

    Joan Micklin Silver was a director of films and plays, and only just passed away in 2020 at age 85. Her best-known films were Hester Street (1975), which received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Carol Kane; Between the Lines (1977), starring John Heard and Lindsay Crouse, Big Girls Don't Cry  . . . They Get Even (1992), a family comedy that was originally known as Stepkids (to people like me who as children saw the trailer on the VHS tape to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Ooze); Invisible Child, a 1999 TV movie where Rita Wilson plays a woman who invents an imaginary child and the rest of her family just goes with it and indulges her delusion; and A Fish in the Bathtub (1999), a indie comedy starring Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara with a young Mark Ruffalo as their son. The Criterion Channel is doing a collection retrospective on their channel, streaming several of her films.

    One of my favorite scenes was when Isabelle is in Gray's Papaya, a famous local chain in NYC of hot dogs and fruit drinks, and a woman comes in to sing "Some Enchanted Evening." The woman is a total stranger, but her lyrics have resonance for Isabelle and her feelings toward Sam. It's a mix of feeling like a precursor to the singing telegram scene from The Fisher King (with Michael Jeter singing to Amanda Plummer to promote Mercedes Ruehl's video store to establish a love connection with Robin Williams) and a tribute to a very New York City landmark, I used to go to the one on W. 4th St in the 2000s when I was in my twenties.

    The film came out in 1988, the year after Norman Jewison's film Moonstruck, a romantic comedy centered around Italian-American Brooklynites, and as that film had a range of adult ages and focused on love in middle and senior age, in a very Italian focus, Crossing Delancey is similar in that it is very focused on Jewish New York, with a mix of characters in their thirties and in their senior ages, and both films feel like they depict a kind of New York City that isn't around as much anymore post-gentrification and major rent hikes, so it feels warm and nice to watch old movies set in New York City with specific cultural identities of older ages as the main characters.