*Please note All screenings of Crossing Delancey will be shown with English subtitles (not HoH).

The second in our Trailblazers: Women in New Hollywood season, a series of films highlighting the visionary filmmaking and lasting legacies of women directors in the New Hollywood era, is Crossing Delancey, a rarely screened film that we might consider the ‘point zero’ of the modern indie rom-com. This screening will be introduced by season programmer Dr Alice Pember (University of Warwick).

Synopsis:

Thirty-something Isabelle 'Izzy' Grossman (Amy Irving) spends her time going from her tiny, solitary West Side apartment to that of her grandmother (Reizl Bozyk) on the Lower East Side. In between, Izzy builds a glowing reputation at the swanky bookstore where she works. While her grandmother plots to find her a romantic match, Izzy is courted by a married, worldly author, Anton (Jeroen Krabbé), yet can't seem to shake the down-to-earth appeal of Sam (Peter Riegert), a pickle vendor.

The Garden Cinema view:

Crossing Delancey is perhaps the most surprisingly under-screened of the films featured in our Trailblazers season. A warm and sharply drawn comedy drama, the film is rich and detailed in its evocation of New York Jewish life and should have long been part of the canon of greatest ever rom-coms. The film centres on Izzy, a New York intellectual torn between two men; a popular writer on whom she has a crush and the pickle salesman she is set up with by a matchmaker. Filled to the brim with charming and specific details (watch out for the late great Yiddish theatre actress Reizl Bozyk in her only English-language film and an incredible musical sequence in a hot dog bar), you’ll find yourself wondering why you’ve never seen it before (and with a hankering for pickles).

Dr Alice Pember is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick. Her research interests include independent cinema, feminist film philosophy and dance and pop music on screen. Her research has appeared in Modern and Contemporary France, French Screen Studies and Film-Philosophy journals. She teaches across areas related to independent French, British and American cinema, film philosophy and queer and women's cinema. Her monograph The Dancing Girl in Contemporary Cinema will be published next year with Edinburgh University Press.

In honour of the central role of pickles in the film, on Sunday 14 April we're organising a special event featuring Pickleback Bloody Mary cocktails & a pickle tasting sampler by Shedletsky’s Deli. Click here for more details on this.