Crossing Delancey

Interesting, touching movie about appearances vs. outcomes. Amy Irving effectively plays an insecure woman who prefers the company of "art" people because she thinks it makes her a better person. Her mother thinks she knows better.

I like that this movie takes its time without being boring. Riegert is excellent and has an understated charisma, but his character is a little too metaphorical to make the story work. And the choice Irving has to make is solved a little bit too conveniently for my taste. But it's so sincere and sweet without being sappy that its faults don't matter all that much.

There are a set of films from the 1980s and 1990s that are very well done comedies about dating or finding one's true love. The best known one is MOONSTRUCK, but others are WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING and this one, CROSSING DELANCEY. Like MOONSTRUCK, CROSSING DELANCEY deals with an ethnic group. Cher's movie was a valentine about Italian Americans. CROSSING DELANCEY is a similar valentine about Jewish Americans in Manhattan.

Izzy (Amy Irving, in her best film part) is pretty happy. She is an independent woman who works in a famous private book shop, gets to be in contact with the leading writers of the day (she tells of speaking to Isaac Bashevits Singer at one point), and has a nice rent controlled apartment near Central Park. But her beloved grandmother Bubbe (Reizl Bozyk) is upset that Izzy is still single. She approaches the local, Lower East Side, matchmaker (Sylvia Miles) to find a groom for her granddaughter. Izzy is appalled at this, but she does come to dinner to meet the young man (Sam - Peter Riegert). He's a businessman (he and his brother run a pickle selling business on Delancey Street). Sam is a smart and nice guy, but Izzy is stand-offish because of her set of modern values.

The title refers to Izzy's assimilated views versus the standards of her grandmother and Sam. She does not want to be associated with old style lifestyles that represent an earlier era. But Sam tells her a story about a friend of his who was forced to buy a new hat when he lost his old cap "Crossing Delancey", and his life was changed was changed as a result (he got engaged in two days). Sam reinforces the story by sending Izzy a new hat (as though to suggest trying something different).

Izzy's state of mind is also confused because she has a sexual interest in a popular novelist named Anton Maas (Jerome Krabbe). Maas is certainly a gifted novelist, with a ready line of colorful patter that causes certain types of women (like Izzy) to swoon. But he is a little self-centered for all that, though Izzy does not notice this for awhile. But she does feel, after getting Sam's gift, that she should do something for him - she tries to set him up with a girlfriend. But she suddenly discovers he is a nice guy, and she begins to wonder if she has made a serious error.

This description of the film is inadequate, especially at it can barely touch the performances of Ms Bozyk (her only film lead role - after a lifetime in Yiddish theater she got this, and proved she should have had many more film performances to her credit), and Sarah Miles as the loud, overbearing, matchmaker Mrs. Hannah Mandlebaum. David Hyde Pierce appears as one of Izzy's fellow employees at the bookstore - an early role for the future Niles Crane. And Rosemary Harris appears as a "Marianne Moore" poet at a soirée, who makes the mistake of trying to patronize Krabbe (in his most sympathetic in the film - he returns the comment with interest). The movie has everything, including a version of a comedy chase (involving a taxicab with an unbelievably bad driver) and moments of hamish philosophy by Bubbe over a bottle of cherry herring. Altogether one perfect romantic comedy.

Very nice ethnic movie about two people who seem to have problems finding a mate. The movie stereotypes Jewish romantic life in New York City. A matchmaker gets involved in matching up young people. The girl works in a book store. The boy works in a pickle store. He has always noticed here from afar. But, now it's time to put them together for life. Nicely acted movie. It does not seem to reflect how people really find each other in America and as such tends to play on an older 18th century concept of matchmaking for people to find their mates. This is more of a movie for a woman's fantasy than a man's concept of mate finding. But, what I like most about the actual story is that it's not about a rich man who finds a poor girl as in Pretty Woman! Here, both the boy and girl are representative of a similar upper low middle income and life style. Such makes it a believable story. Well acted by all cast members.

Larry de Illinois

A winning movie with wonderful contrasts, excellent cast, and a terrific soundtrack. Peter Riegert (who makes far too few movies) is great as an ordinary joe with more going for him than it first seems. Amy Irving is equally good as the "ambiguous" bookstore manager and maybe best of all is her grandmother who wants her to meet a nice jewish man. Delancey is a metaphor in a movie with quite a bit of subtlety without being pretentious.

This is my favorite movie of all time with an unbelievable cast of great character actors. I remember a New York reviewer at the time calling Amy Irving's performance "lukewarm" and I could not disagree more. Irving's performance and character epitomize the thirty-something single New York working woman trying to move up in the world. Irving's character is completely enraptured by the experience of being the book manager of a very prestigious uptown neighborhood book store and falls for the good-looking, European writer who is completely enraptured with himself! Riegert is the nice "pickleman" who any girl knows would make a great husband but the fireworks just don't go off for the girl. Any woman can definitely relate to the dilemma of being attracted to the charming, good-looking rogue but when you get right down to it, it is the everyday "picklemen" who stay true and truly make the world go round.

And I must say that this film captures the city better than any movie I have yet to see complete with crazy singing woman in crowded narrow hot dog joint, midage man struggling to play handball in local park, elderly women learning self-defense at community Y. Classic New York stuff! I could go on and on but do note far out performances by Sylvia Miles as the tacky matchmaker and Rosemary Harris, the great English actress, in a cameo near the end.