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Sophie's Choice (film)
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Wikipedia article
{{Infobox film
| name = Sophie's Choice
| image = Sophie's Choice1.jpg
| alt =
| caption = Theatrical release poster
| director = Alan J. Pakula
| producer =
| screenplay = Alan J. Pakula
| based_on =
| starring =
| music = Marvin Hamlisch
| cinematography = Nestor Almendros
| editing = Evan A. Lottman
| studio = ITC Entertainment
Keith Barish Productions
| distributor = Universal Pictures
Associated Film Distribution
| released =
| runtime = 151 minutes
| country = United States
| language =
| budget = $9 million[http://powergrid.thewrap.com/project/sophies-choice Box Office Information for 'Sophie's Choice'.] 'The Wrap'. Retrieved April 4, 2013.
| gross = $30 million
}}
'Sophie's Choice' is a 1982 American drama film directed and written by Alan J. Pakula, adapted from William Styron's 1979 novel 'Sophie's Choice'. The film stars Meryl Streep as Zofia "Sophie" Zawistowski, a Polish immigrant to America with a dark secret from her past who shares a boarding house in Brooklyn with her tempestuous lover Nathan and young writer Stingo. It also stars Kevin Kline (in his first feature film), Peter MacNicol, Rita Karin, Stephen D. Newman and Josh Mostel.
'Sophie's Choice' premiered in Los Angeles on December 8, 1982, and was theatrically released on December 10 by Universal Pictures. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $30 million.
Streep's titular performance was almost unanimously praised. The film received five nominations at the 55th Academy Awards, for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Original Score, with Streep winning the award for Best Actress.
Plot
In 1947, Stingo moves to Brooklyn to write a novel and is befriended by Sophie Zawistowska, a Polish immigrant, and her emotionally unstable lover, Nathan Landau. Nathan is constantly jealous and, when he is in one of his violent mood swings, he convinces himself that Sophie is unfaithful to him, and he abuses and harasses her. A flashback shows how Nathan first met Sophie after her immigration to the U.S. when she nearly died due to anemia.
Sophie tells Stingo before she came to the U.S., her husband and father were killed in a German work camp, and she was interned in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Stingo later learns from a college professor Sophie's father was a Nazi sympathizer. When Stingo confronts Sophie with this, she admits the truth and tells him about her war-time lover, Jzef, who lived with his half-sister, Wanda, and was a leader in the Resistance. Wanda tried to convince Sophie to translate some stolen Gestapo documents, but Sophie declined, fearing she might endanger her children. Two weeks later, Jzef was murdered by the Gestapo and Sophie was arrested and sent to Auschwitz with her two children, Jan and Eva.
Nathan tells Sophie and Stingo he is doing groundbreaking research at a pharmaceutical company, but Nathan's physician brother tells Stingo Nathan has paranoid schizophrenia and all of the schools Nathan attended were "expensive funny farms". Nathan is not a biologist as he claims. He does have a job at a pharmaceutical firm, which his brother obtained for him, but it is in the library, and he only occasionally assists with research.
After Nathan believes Sophie has betrayed him again, he calls Sophie and Stingo on the telephone and fires a gun in a violent rage. Sophie and Stingo flee to a hotel. She reveals to him that, upon arrival at Auschwitz, she was forced to choose which one of her two children would be gassed and which would proceed to the labor camp. To avoid having both children killed, she chose Jan to be sent to the children's camp and Eva to be murdered in the gas chamber.
Sophie and Stingo have sex, but while Stingo is sleeping, Sophie returns to Nathan. Sophie and Nathan commit suicide by taking cyanide. Stingo recites the poem "Ample Make This Bed" by Emily Dickinson, the American poet Sophie was fond of reading.
Stingo moves to a small farm his father recently inherited in southern Virginia to finish writing his novel.
Cast
* Meryl Streep as Zofia "Sophie" Zawistowski
* Kevin Kline as Nathan Landau
* Peter MacNicol as Stingo
* Rita Karin as Yetta Zimmerman
* Stephen D. Newman as Larry Landau
* Josh Mostel as Morris Fink
* Marcell Rosenblatt as Astrid Weinstein
* Moishe Rosenfeld as Moishe Rosenblum
* Robin Bartlett as Lillian Grossman
* Eugene Lipinski as Polish professor
* John Rothman as Librarian
* Neddim Prohic as Jzef
* Katharina Thalbach as Wanda
* Jennifer Lawn as Eva Zawistowski
* Adrian Kalitka as Jan Zawistowski
* Joseph Leon as Dr. Blackstock
* David Wohl as English teacher
* Nina Polan as Woman in English Class
* Vida Jerman as female SS guard
* Josef Sommer as the Narrator (Stingo as an adult)
* Karlheinz Hackl as SS doctor
* Gnther Maria Halmer (de) as Rudolf Hss
Production
Styron wrote the novel with Ursula Andress in mind for the part of Sophie, and the Slovak actress Magdalna Vryov was also considered. Streep was very determined to get the role. After obtaining a bootlegged copy of the script, she went after Pakula, and threw herself on the ground, begging him to give her the part. Pakula's first choice was Liv Ullmann, for her ability to project the foreignness that would add to her appeal in the eyes of an impressionable, romantic Southerner.
The film was mostly shot in New York City, with Sophie's flashback scenes shot afterwards in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. Production for the film, at times, was more like a theatrical set than a film set. Pakula allowed the cast to rehearse for three weeks, and was open to improvisation from the actors, "spontaneous things", according to Streep. Streep had to lose a lot of weight to film the scenes in Yugoslavia at the concentration camp.
Release
The film had its premiere at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles on Wednesday, December 8, 1982, and then opened on December 10 in nine theatres in New York City (Cinema 1 and 3), Los Angeles (Avco 2), San Francisco, San Jose, Chicago, Dallas, Washington D.C. and Toronto.
Reception
Critical reception
'Sophie's Choice' received positive reviews. On the review aggregator website 'Rotten Tomatoes', it holds a 78% rating based on 41 reviews, with an average score of 7.00/10. The consensus reads, "'Sophie's Choice' may be more sobering than stirring, but Meryl Streep's Oscar-winning performance holds this postwar period drama together." On 'Metacritic', the film has a 68 out of 100 rating based on nine critics, signifying "generally favorable reviews".Roger Ebert of the 'Chicago Sun-Times' gave the film four out of four stars, calling it "a fine, absorbing, wonderfully acted, heartbreaking movie. It is about three people who are faced with a series of choices, some frivolous, some tragic. As they flounder in the bewilderment of being human in an age of madness, they become our friends, and we love them".
Gene Siskel of 'The Chicago Tribune' gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, finding it "not as powerful or as involving" as the novel but praising Streep for a "striking performance".
Janet Maslin of 'The New York Times' wrote, "Though it's far from a flawless movie, 'Sophie's Choice' is a unified and deeply affecting one. Thanks in large part to Miss Streep's bravura performance, it's a film that casts a powerful, uninterrupted spell."
Gary Arnold of 'The Washington Post' wrote, "There is greatness in the extraordinary performances of Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol, who endow the principal characters of 'Sophie's Choice' with appealing, ultimately heartbreaking individuality and romantic glamor."
Not all reviews were positive. Todd McCarthy at 'Variety' called it "a handsome, doggedly faithful and astoundingly tedious adaptation of William Styron's best-seller. Despite earnest intentions and top talent involved, lack of chemistry among the three leading players and over-elaborated screenplay make this a trying experience to sit through."
Sheila Benson of the 'Los Angeles Times' wrote, "Although many of the book's characters have been cut away, and with them some of its torrent of words, the film feels claustrophobic, prolix and airless to the point of stupefaction ... Yet, whatever the film's overall problems, the role of Sophie, its beautiful, complex, worldly heroine, gives Meryl Streep the chance at bravura performance and she is, in a word, incandescent."
The 'Boston Globe' film critic, Michael Blowen wrote, "Pakula's literal adaptation of Styron's 'Sophie's Choice' is an admirable, if reverential, movie that crams this triangle into a -hour character study enriched by Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, and nearly destroyed by Peter MacNicol."
Pauline Kael of 'The New Yorker' wrote that it "is, I think, an infuriatingly bad movie ... The whole plot is based on a connection that isn't therethe connection between Sophie and Nathan's relationship and what the Nazis did to the Jews. Eventually, we get to the Mystery to Sophie's Choice and discover that the incident is garish rather than illuminating, and too particular to demonstrate anything general".
Streep's characterization was voted the third-greatest movie performance of all time by 'Premiere' magazine. The film was also ranked number one in Roger Ebert's Top Ten List for 1982 and was listed on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) at number 91.
Accolades
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"|-
! Award
! Category
! Nominee(s)
! Result
|-
| rowspan="5"| Academy Awards
| Best Actress
| Meryl Streep
|
|-
| Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
| Alan J. Pakula
|
|-
| Best Cinematography
| Nstor Almendros
|
|-
| Best Costume Design
| Albert Wolsky
|
|-
| Best Original Score
| Marvin Hamlisch
|
|-
| Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
| Best Actress
| rowspan="2"| Meryl Streep
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| British Academy Film Awards
| Best Actress in a Leading Role
|
|-
| Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles
| Kevin Kline
|
|-
| Danish Film Awards
| Best Foreign Film
| Alan J. Pakula
|
|-
| David di Donatello Awards
| Best Foreign Actress
| Meryl Streep
|
|-
| rowspan="3"| Golden Globe Awards
| colspan="2"| Best Motion Picture Drama
|
|-
| Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama
| Meryl Streep
|
|-
| New Star of the Year Actor
| Kevin Kline
|
|-
| Japan Academy Film Prize
| colspan="2"| Outstanding Foreign Language Film
|
|-
| Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards
| Best Actress
| Meryl Streep
|
|-
| Kinema Junpo Awards
| Best Foreign Language Film
| Alan J. Pakula
|
|-
| Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards
| Best Actress
| Meryl Streep
|
|-
| Mainichi Film Awards
| Best Foreign Language Film
| Alan J. Pakula
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| National Board of Review Awards
| colspan="2"| Top Ten Films
|
|-
| Best Actress
| rowspan="3"| Meryl Streep
|
|-
| National Society of Film Critics Awards
| Best Actress
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| New York Film Critics Circle Awards
| Best Actress
|
|-
| Best Cinematography
| Nstor Almendros
|
|-
| Sant Jordi Awards
| Best Performance in a Foreign Film
| Meryl Streep
|
|-
| Writers Guild of America Awards
| Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium
| Alan J. Pakula
|
|}
See also
* 1982 in film
* List of Holocaust films
Notes
References
;Bibliography
*
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