New on Criterion 4K, Crossing Delancey Is an Underrated ’80s Gem

The Criterion Collection’s Spine #1250, a 4K UHD disc of 1988’s newly remastered Crossing Delancey, would make for a lovely Valentine’s Day treat were it to arrive in time. It releases just a bit late for that, on Feb. 18, 2025. Nonetheless, Joan Micklin Silver’s sweet, funny, smart, and slightly tart romantic comedy is a delightful little underrated 1980s gem that works on any day of the year. It’s got an excellent cast, an appropriately ethnic flavor, and a lovely lo-fi feel, all of which add up to a tender portrait of a young Jewish career woman’s choice between two prospective suitors.

The plot itself is less than groundbreaking, but the charm of Crossing Delancey is in the telling. Izzy (Amy Irving) enjoys her single life as an indie bookstore manager and promoter when two separate and very different men enter her life. One is a handsome, successful novelist named Anton Maes (Jeroen Krabbé). He looks to her as fine in person as he does on the back cover portraits of his books and is just the kind of hunky artiste literary-minded Izzy has dreamed of. Then, there is the less physically appealing dude Izzy’s grandmother is scheming to set her up with, a “nice Jewish boy” who runs a pickle store on the Lower East Side. Sam (Peter Reigert) is quiet and unassuming and, while clearly more than a little smitten with pretty, successful Izzy, not quite the kind she imagined spending her life with.

There may be no real surprise as to who Izzy will end up with. In fact, for most of the film’s runtime she is the only character who doesn’t realize which of the two men is the better choice. But no matter, as Crossing Delancey is a character study of a young professional woman conflicted about her heritage and a love letter to the place and time where she lives. Director Joan Micklin Silver—hardly a household name but a filmmaker who enjoyed a long career directing in an era when few did—delivers an ineffably authentic, loving, and detailed portrait of 1980s New York City in all its diversity and idiosyncrasy.

Micklin Silver, who passed away in 2020, directed seven theatrical features and many more TV films between 1975 and 1999. Hers was a time when women, generally, were afforded very few chances to do so. The percentage of Hollywood releases directed by women hovered between just four and ten percent for decades, and those that did direct—like, say, her peer Nancy Savoca (Dogfight, Household Saints) rarely got multiple opportunities to do so. Micklin Silver’s lo-fi sensibilities, focusing on collaboration between cast and crew, are perfect in Crossing Delancey. The film’s comedy is subtle and exquisitely timed. The scenes progress from one to the next with the kind of leisurely grace one rarely sees today, except in rare treasures like Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. Herself the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Micklin Silver leans into the film’s ethnicity, culture, and heritage, yet never heavy-handedly, focusing first and foremost on character.

Amy Irving was, if not a box-office star in the 1980s, a high-profile and Academy Award-nominated actor (for Best Supporting Actress in Barbara Streisand’s Yentl) with impeccable Broadway credentials. Only rarely did she land leads like in Crossing Delancey. She was probably as well known for her relationship with Steven Spielberg. They were together from 1976 to 1980, and their breakup reportedly cost her the lead in Raiders of the Lost Ark. When they reconciled and remarried, their subsequent divorce reportedly cost him $100 million in one of the most controversial celebrity divorces of all time. Irving’s lead roles in the cinema were, in sum, few, but here she is pretty perfectly cast as a Jewish career woman navigating the boundaries of her heritage.

Peter Riegert, meanwhile, was himself navigating boundaries, having begun his film career with the splashy surprise hit Animal House and then settling into a handful of supporting roles in transnational productions like A Man in Love and low-key indies like that in Bill Forsyth’s delightful Local Hero and Crossing Delancey. Here he, like Irving, plays his character with a subdued and charming dignity, letting her Izzy come to realize it’s his Sam who is the best potential partner for her. It’s the supporting cast, especially scene-stealing Yiddish-theater star Reizl Bozyk as Izzy’s “bubbie” and Jeroen Krabbé’s traditionally handsome but egocentric writer character, who stir up the conflicts.

Another thing the film gets so, so right: its spot-on assessment of literary culture and its cult of (minor) celebrity. Irving’s Izzy is a bookstore manager and publicist whose job it is at times to massage the inestimable and fragile egos of visiting writers, including not only Krabbé’s modestly-talented but robust-selling Anton Maes but also the frightfully condescending poet Pauline Swift (Rosemary Harris), full of highfalutin’ blather and unsolicited advice. There are only a few scenes focused on this aspect of Izzy’s career (and they also feature an impossibly young David Hyde Pierce, credited then just as “David Pierce,” in his first named film role), but they are sharp and smart and without the all-too-typical buffoonery one too often sees in many Hollywood depictions of literary culture.

The film’s image quality is excellent in many ways. The new 4K restoration, supervised by the film’s DP Theo van de Sande and composited from the original 35mm negative in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, boasts a lovely color balance with perfect blacks and detailed highlights in both exterior and interior scenes. It could hardly be more lovingly lit. In those respects, the film could not look better. It’s also worth noting, though, that the film stock is simply soft—so soft in fact that it’s almost impossible to distinguish between the 4K restoration provided on UHD disc and that provided on the Blu-ray version. Both look very, very good, and both seem to provide the film’s characteristic soft grain to an equivalent degree.

The original stereo surround soundtrack was remastered from the 35mm magnetic track. Not only is the dialogue crisp and clear, so too is the film’s delightful soundtrack from The Roches, with a handful of time-capsule nuggets from rockers like The English Beat thrown in for good measure. For the feature, subtitles are provided for the deaf and hard of hearing. It pained me to note that whoever edited them—I’m guessing not a Boomer or Joneser like me—did not know “Red Buttons” was an actor. When Irving’s Izzy jokes her parents moved to Florida “to live with red buttons” [sic], there’s no proper-noun capitalization. Maybe they thought “red buttons” were some kind of pre-MAGA MAGA iconography.