Movie of the Day: January 6, 2003

IMDb Movie of the Day
The director had won an Academy Award for his previous film, a contemporary drama that the entire country seemed to fall in love with. The lead actor had nabbed an Oscar nomination for his amazing turn in a musical-inspired biopic. The lead actress was the hottest thing since sliced bread, considered the best of her generation. And the movie they made was... a tiny little Hitchcockian thriller without bells and whistles, spare in style, and definitely not fodder for year-end award fests. Still of the Night starred Roy Scheider as a Manhattan psychologist drawn into a murder investigation when one of his patients turns up brutally stabbed -- and said patient's mistress (Meryl Streep) makes a mysterious visit to her lover's shrink. Drawn to the icy blonde, the psychologist undertakes a stealthy investigation, and while he starts to develop romantic feelings for the mystery woman, he also begins to wonder: is she the murderer? Adroitly scripted and directed by Robert Benton, Still of the Night opened in 1982 a week after Streep's tour-de-force, Sophie's Choice, and it suffered in comparison. As subtle as Sophie was showy, moviegoers weren't ready for a sexually carefree, calculating Streep who didn't wear her emotions on her sleeve (and appeared briefly naked from the rear as well). Nor were they expecting a Spellbound-style thriller, steeped in psychotherapy, from the man who dramatized the dissolution of the quintessential modern marriage in Kramer vs. Kramer. And where was the razzle-dazzle Scheider of All That Jazz? Audiences were puzzled, then dismissive. Years later, though, Still of the Night culled a quiet but devoted following drawn to its sleek Manhattan and Long Island settings, its quiet but devastating suspense, its Freudian puzzle-solving, and the odd-yet-inspired pairing of Streep and Scheider, both so still yet drawn to each other that they seem like two waves coalescing on a cold, dark lake at midnight. (more)

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