1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

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swo17
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1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#1 Post by swo17 » Thu Dec 15, 2022 12:44 pm

Chilly Scenes of Winter

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The trailblazing Joan Micklin Silver—one of only five women to direct a film for a Hollywood studio in the 1970s—digs fearlessly into the psychology of a thorny relationship in this anti–romantic comedy, based on Ann Beattie's best-selling novel, about lovelorn civil servant Charles (John Heard) and his married-but-separated coworker Laura (Mary Beth Hurt). Months after their affair has ended, Charles is haunted by memories as he desperately attempts to rekindle a love that perhaps never was. Switching deftly between past and present, Micklin Silver guides this piercing deconstruction of male wish-fulfillment fantasy beyond standard movie-romance tropes into something more complicated and cuttingly truthful.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• New program featuring producers Griffin Dunne, Mark Metcalf, and Amy Robinson
• Documentary from 1983 by Katja Raganelli about director Joan Micklin Silver
• Excerpts of a 2005 interview with Micklin Silver
• Original ending of the film, cut by Micklin Silver for its rerelease in 1982
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Shonni Enelow

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aox
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2008 12:02 pm
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Re: 1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#2 Post by aox » Thu Dec 15, 2022 1:53 pm

I have not seen this. But I have to ask, why is the English title controversial? It's an American film. IMDB lists it as "Head Over Heels", and my streaming app doesn't recognize either title.

Also, is this a good film?

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: 1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#3 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 15, 2022 2:08 pm

Yes, I really liked it, here were my brief thoughts from a discussion on the filmmakers' work in the Cohen thread:
therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Aug 16, 2022 10:24 pm
I recently watched Chilly Scenes of Winter and found it uniquely naked in its willingness to be honest about an oft-depicted narrative that's typically glamorized in a psychologically protective manner, whereby the protagonist reflexively engages in his own non-pathetic fantasy of being a cool protagonist in a romantic story. Heard and Silver go for an authentic portrait, and it rides a subtle range of tones within that wheelhouse. It's funny and it gently stings in all the right places.
I just picked up the TT blu, so I guess I'll gift that to someone for the holidays to rationalize picking this up

beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Re: 1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#4 Post by beamish14 » Thu Dec 15, 2022 3:28 pm

aox wrote:
Thu Dec 15, 2022 1:53 pm
I have not seen this. But I have to ask, why is the English title controversial? It's an American film. IMDB lists it as "Head Over Heels", and my streaming app doesn't recognize either title.

Also, is this a good film?

It’s an interesting story. United Artists had 2 films starring John Heard, which were initially called Head Over Heels and Cutter & Bone. The former was reedited with a different ending and re-released in 1982 as Chilly Scenes… while the latter was unchanged, except for its title: Cutter’s Way.

United Artists was going through a fallow period, with multiple films receiving substandard releases.

If you can access it, this New York Times article is worth reading

beamish14
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Re: 1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#5 Post by beamish14 » Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:18 pm

I’m very surprised that Joan Micklin Silver’s daughters weren’t interviewed for this, and that there is no sign of author Ann Beattie, either. The producers might touch upon it in their commentary, but Beattie’s cameo in the film (as an awkward waitress) was a stipulation she made when she sold the novel rights!

Guess I’ll hold onto my Twilight Time disc for the commentary

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#6 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:24 pm

beamish14 wrote:
Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:18 pm
Guess I’ll hold onto my Twilight Time disc for the commentary
It's good? I was going to get rid of my unopened TT copy, but I'd love to be sold on keeping it. I didn't even check the special features for this announcement since I thought Dunne said they were recording a commentary vs 'program', but I was clearly mistaken

beamish14
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Re: 1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#7 Post by beamish14 » Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:53 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:24 pm
beamish14 wrote:
Thu Dec 15, 2022 4:18 pm
Guess I’ll hold onto my Twilight Time disc for the commentary
It's good? I was going to get rid of my unopened TT copy, but I'd love to be sold on keeping it. I didn't even check the special features for this announcement since I thought Dunne said they were recording a commentary vs 'program', but I was clearly mistaken
It has some nice anecdotes and information. Not wall-to-wall informative, but worth hearing

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John Cope
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Re: 1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#8 Post by John Cope » Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:50 pm

What seems most precious about the film to me is, in a lot of ways, just how it depicts a commonplace reality. That seems so scarce now, so barely represented or even pursued. I don't know why that is other than that it does, I guess, court a kind of banality. But God knows our event pictures or even what passes for human drama most of the time now is banality writ large. The level of scrupulous care and observation you get here is so rare as to be almost without precedent.

It's a commonplace reality which is made up not just of recognizable details but relatable characteristics and qualities, even when we might most like to differentiate ourselves from those things. But that's part of that unremitting scrupulous care in observation. It is warts and all to be sure. Much of that has to do with the sincerity of the characters, their open expressivity, their willingness to be hurt as part of the necessity of opening themselves up to love. But it's also in an all around portraiture of vulnerability and exposure that make up the characters and their environment (never has the bleakness of Salt Lake City been so well employed--and I say that as someone who actually lived there at around the time this was shot). Only Alan Rudolph's films seem to traffic so thoroughly in exposed and vulnerable characters, to make them so much the predominant fabric and texture of the specific filmic reality, and yet his films are far more about highly stylized presentations and so have to deal with that as well. In Chilly Scenes, the most foundational level element here, as it undergirds the rest, is a kind of quietly wistful and pensive listlessness, a very particular post-60's fallout of ultimate aimlessness that ends up also being very universal.

Over the last few years this film has come to be understood more and more as a kind of perverse anti-rom com about a main character who exhibits a toxic masculinity and all the defining characteristics of a stalker rather than romantic hero. And while it is great that this aspect is being picked up on, perhaps inevitably during an era which is so sensitively attuned to it, I wouldn't come down as heavily on that part of the equation. It risks too much be-all-end-all conclusiveness, a sort of counter-productive reductionism. The film is simply too great at being an all-at-once depiction of longing and regret and love to be seen or understood as primarily just one thing: it really is that ideal of comedy/drama/horror which does not seek to overly distinguish each element from the rest and therefore comes closest to a genuine and comprehensive envisioning of our reality.

Conversely though, I do think that Daniel Kremer's assessment of it here (and the trailer itself) is perhaps a little too rosy and makes perhaps too little of the challenge of our ostensible romantic lead: while we may be sympathetic to his struggles and see some of ourselves in him, he does also quite comfortably fit most modern definitions of an obsessed stalker and that confrontational element never abates; if anything it intensifies. I do appreciate the shout out in the video to Danny Peary, one of my own greatest influences and inspirations (and his write-up on this movie really is second to none).

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CSM126
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Re: 1176 Chilly Scenes of Winter

#9 Post by CSM126 » Sat Mar 18, 2023 5:15 pm


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