#3 MANHATTAN (1979)

1979 was a busy year for Meryl with no less than 3 movies out, acting opposite major league actors at the time.

The Film

The first was Manhattan: Woody Allen (I forget his character’s name) is a TV writer who is torn between his 17 year old college wannabe actress lover and a woman who is having an affair with his married best friend.

Meryl is back to a small part playing Woody’s ex-wife who has left him for another woman and is writing a book exposing all his failings.

She’s good in what she’s got. She’s the lesbian ex-wife. But…

Let’s talk about the best thing of the film though…

MERYL’S HAIR!!!!!

Look at it!

It’s so long!!

It acts tremendously!

Look!

Look at this hair acting!

And again!

Ahem. So yes, Streep does good hair in this film.

Woody Allen’s Manhattan. Hmmm. I think it’s a movie I’m meant to think is brilliant. It’s shot beautifully in black and white, it’s witty, it’s smart. It’s full of characters who wander round modern art galleries and central park. I dunno. Maybe it just wasn’t my sense of humour. Or maybe I need to see it again. I watched it with my housemate and he said “it’s like a film you would watch in A levels if you were writing about modernism or feminism”.

Meryl filmed this in the middle of filming Kramer vs Kramer, it’s weird to think these movies were being filmed at the same time but more about that other one later…

Maybe I should watch it again who knows. The last scene is quite touching in an annoying “you’re being a douche and she’s so sweet” way.

I’ll just end with this gif again. HAIR!

#2 THE DEER HUNTER (1978)

Strooth!

So. Admission. I’d never before seen The Deer Hunter. All I knew about it was that there was a famous Russian Roulette scene and that it was a film I should probably see at some point but you know…life and stuff. (A bit like The Godfather) (yes, I’ve never seen The Godfather) (yes, I’ll get to it! Alright?!)

So now, I’ve watched it and blimey charlie it’s a good movie! Friendship, war, love, normal lives getting caught up in extreme circumstances and the consequences of living on after. At 3 hours it’s a long old watch but it’s worth it.

The Film:

A group of friends in a small Pennsylvainian town, lead by Michael (Robert De Niro) get together to celebrate a wedding (that goes on for blooming eternity) whilst also preparing to serve in the army and fight in Vietnam. Once over there they face a horrifying ordeal and are separated with no indication if each of the others has survived. Returing home, Michael falls in love with his best friend Nick’s (Christopher Walken) sweetheart Linda (Meryl Streep) whilst trying to live with the aftermath of what happened. After another of his friends returns, Michael goes back to learn the fate of Nick and to try to get him back home…

I loved this film! In the first third it makes a real effort to develop the audience’s connection to each of the friends in their everday setting before lauching head on into atrocious bloody war. And… as a second movie for Meryl it is leaps and bounds more of a real debut than Julia. Hell, she was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar out of it! (Although Maggie Smith beat her. Bitch)

Who is Meryl in it??

This could have been a bit of a non-part had it not been for Streepy’s performance. Essentially, the character is a young woman waiting for her man to come home, wrestling with feelings for his best friend and being a bit wet and drippy. However, Meryl’s take is to present someone who is stuck, working in a shop in a dead end town, pretty, but with limited opportunities, with a distinct lack of self assurance and confidence and a need to depend on someone. Weak voice but big heart.

On a quick side note, I was slightly taken back by how stunning a late twenties Meryl Streep was. Her first shot she spins around with that big blonde hair and it’s hard not to double take, especially since we’re so used to her now in her sixties. However, don’t worry, all that superficial garbage was quickly forgotten as she gives this performance her all. From dealing with a violent drunkard father to the grief of not knowing whether her beloved is alive or not she makes the only substantial female part in the movie quietly important and timidly essential in amongst all the burly, loud, all-american blokey blokes.

On a sad note, the film was the last that Meryl’s partner John Cazale, made before dying of lung cancer shortly after filming.

Meryl: “I was ecstatic to be in ‘The Deer Hunter’ because I was living with John Cazale at the time and we could be in it together. That is so hard for actors, you’re always in different cities, missing each other… They needed a girl between the two guys, and I was it.”

From what I’ve read they were very much in love to the nth degree and it was sad to see them act opposite each other knowing their personal circumstances.

Overall, this film is awesome. Heartbreaking, incredibly tense and a really powerful story about the impact of war and the injustices of it all. First Oscar nomination for our gal and an early boost of the engines in our Streep Race!

NEXT! VROOM VROOM!

#1 JULIA (1977)

KLAXON!!

GO! GO! GO!

Hold onto your Prada bags, kayacks, dingo’s and oscar nomination certificates, we’re off!! Streep Race has begun!!

So…. We start in 1977. Meryl is 27 (my age, DAMMIT!) I have managed to get a copy of the film, a bit of booze and am settled down for the 1st ever film Meryl landed a part in. And for a first film you can’t get more legit than with Oscar winner Jane Fonda and 3 time nominee Vanessa Redgrave. I wish I could say this was a “The Hours”-esque threesome with the words: FONDA REDGRAVE STREEP above the title but sadly no, this is still 1977, no one out of the New York theatre scene knows who Meryl is and her part is tiny! Literally she’s on screen for under a minute. Scandal!

First things first: The Film

Jane Fonda plays Lillian, an American playwright who whilst struggling to finish her latest work is persuaded to spend time in Europe to find inspiration and to track down her old childhood friend Julia (Redgrave). Whilst out there she discovers Julia has begun to help and rescue Jews from the Nazi’s (did I mention this was set in WW2?… Well it’s set in WW2) and finds her bandaged to the hilt in a hospital before managing to sleep through the nurses moving Julia (and all the beds) to another untraceable location. A couple years later, having returned to America, Lillian becomes filthy rich and famous (I didn’t know playwriting was so lucrative in those days) and decides to track Julia down again. She does, and is enlisted to smuggle a vast amount of money for her through Nazi Berlin in a very silly hat…

So where does Meryl show up in all this? She plays Anne-Marie, a very bitchy, sarky (“you look very slim…”) young woman who presumably was a friend of theirs back in the dizzay. After Fonda becomes rich and famous Meryl’s main raison d’etre in the film is to inform Lillian via politically apathetic and snidey comments that Julia is in Moscow doing “antifa-um…anti-facist work…”

I was so engrossed in the film before her entrance that I was surprised when she finally turns around in a crowded party scene with a muffly line. It’s hard to imagine this actress in a brown wig and a hideous pink dress is going to turn out to hold the record for most oscar nominations by any actor EVER…

Even though the part is small, she does manage to hold her own with Ms Jane Barbarella, who by all accounts took a shining to her:

Meryl : “All my scenes were with Jane who showed me what a mark was and how to hit it and how if you DIDN’T… you wouldn’t be in the movie….”

Most of Meryl’s scenes were cut but from what Fonda saw she apparantly went back to Hollywood and told the world and his wife who she was and whilst Meryl was by no means green to the profession (at this point she had already become a bit of a sensation on broadway) it was enough to open more doors than as Meryl puts it “I could possibly imagine”.

I was really surprised by the film as a whole. It is gripping, intelligent and it’s kind of sad to think that even now it’s rare to find a big studio feature film which centres on two very complex interesting and fully rounded female characters. If you can see it (although it is kind of lost in the ether now) I would highly recommend it. Redgrave won Best Supporting Actress for playing the title role and her speech provoked boo’s from the audience as she made some pretty hefty remarks defending Palestinians so it feels quite timely watching it.

Meryl jokingly describes this film as “the worst debut anyone’s ever made”. I don’t think that. But who knew watching this in theatres back then what the bitchy one would go on to accomplish, let alone in her next film……… oooooOOOoooooh!

(that was a cue for you to go oooOOOoooh, like that).

Searching for Julia…

“What do you mean you can’t find Julia…?”

Seems we have a delay in the klaxon being fired for the first leg of my Streep Race Merylthon.

So far I have most of her early work all lined up to be watched via various means, netflix, dvd’s, online rental- NOTHING by desreputable means I hasten to add. However Julia, Meryl’s first ever film role back in 1977, is eluding me…

I don’t know, you’d think it would be easy to find a world war 2 drama from the 70’s about a young American playwright helping a jewish intellectual oxford graduate friend smuggle money from the nazi’s through Germany but noooooo….

Another film difficult to track down which is soon on the list is another obscure political comedy, it looks like, called “The Seduction of Joe Tynan” from 1979.

Part of the challenge of this escapade is watching the films chronologically. And chronologically it shall be dammit!

So bear with. By hook or by crook I shall find Julia and Joe Tynan and start this ridiculous, epic, time consuming (but fun nonetheless) task I’ve mounted for myself.

Continue stretching Streep Racers. Or stick on a Fonda workout video to warm up as she is the star of this first film we’re yet to find…