Sophie's Choice (film)

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Sophie's Choice

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Alan J. Pakula
Produced by Alan J. Pakula
Keith Barish
William C.Gerrity
Martin Starger
Written by Alan J. Pakula
Based on Sophie's Choice 
by William Styron
Narrated by Josef Sommer
Starring Meryl Streep
Kevin Kline
Peter MacNicol
Music by Marvin Hamlisch
Cinematography Nestor Almendros
Editing by Evan Lottman
Studio ITC Entertainment
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release dates
  • December 8, 1982 (1982-12-08)
Running time 150 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Polish
German
Budget $9 million[1]
Box office $30,036,000[2]

Sophie's Choice is a 1982 American drama film directed by Alan J. Pakula, who adapted the novel of the same name by William Styron. Meryl Streep stars as Sophie, a Polish immigrant who shares a boarding house in Brooklyn with her tempestuous lover (Kevin Kline) and a young writer (Peter MacNicol).

Streep's performance was very favorably received, and it won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. The film was nominated for Best Cinematography (Néstor Almendros), Costume Design (Albert Wolsky), Best Music (Marvin Hamlisch), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Alan J. Pakula).

British company ITC Entertainment produced the film, and Lew Grade was influential in bringing the novel to the big screen.[citation needed]

Plot

In 1947 Stingo relocates to Brooklyn in order to write a novel and is befriended by Sophie Zawistowski, a Polish immigrant, and her emotionally unstable lover, Nathan Landau.

One evening, Stingo learns from Sophie that she was married but her husband and her father were killed in a German work camp and that she was interned in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

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 abuses and harasses her. There is a flashback showing Nathan with Sophie who is near death due to anemia shortly after her immigration to the U.S.

Sophie eventually reveals that her father was a Nazi sympathizer. Sophie's lover, Józef, who lived with his half-sister, Wanda, 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 Józef was murdered by the Gestapo, and Sophie was arrested and sent to Auschwitz with her children.

Nathan tells Sophie and Stingo that the research he is doing at a pharmaceutical company is so groundbreaking that he will win the Nobel Prize. At a meeting with Nathan's physician brother, Stingo learns that Nathan is a paranoid schizophrenic and that all of the schools that Nathan had attended were "expensive funny farms." He has a job in the library of a pharmaceutical firm, which his brother got for him, and only occasionally assists with research.

After Nathan discharges a firearm over the telephone 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 her son, Jan, to be sent to the children's camp, and her daughter, Eva, to be sent to her death.

Sophie and Stingo make love, 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

Casting notes

William Styron wrote the novel with Ursula Andress in mind for the part of Sophie, but Meryl Streep was very determined to get the role. After she obtained a bootlegged copy of the script, she went after Alan J. Pakula and threw herself on the ground, begging him to give her the part.[3] 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. Streep's characterization was voted the third greatest movie performance of all time by Premiere Magazine.[4]

Reception

Sophie's Choice won the Academy Award for Best Actress (Meryl Streep) and was nominated for Best Cinematography (Néstor Almendros), Costume Design (Albert Wolsky), Best Music (Marvin Hamlisch), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Alan J. Pakula). The film was also ranked #1 in the Roger Ebert's Top Ten List for 1982 and was listed on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

  • Best Actress – Streep (nominated)
  • Most Outstanding Newcomer to Film – Kevin Kline (nominated)

Golden Globe Awards

  • Best Actress: Drama – Streep (won)
  • Best Film: Drama (nominated)
  • New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture: Male – Kline (nominated)

Writers Guild of America

  • Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium – Pakula (nominated)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Box Office Information for Sophie's Choice. The Wrap. Retrieved April 4, 2013.
  2. ↑ Box Office Information for Sophie's Choice. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved April 1, 2013
  3. ↑ Skow, John (1981-09-07). "What Makes Meryl Magic". Time. Retrieved 2007-03-28. 
  4. ↑ Premiere Magazine: The 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. AMC's FilmSite. Retrieved February 27, 2013.

External links

Films directed by Alan J. Pakula
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
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