Possibly the biggest surprise for me at the recent Oscars telecast was when Jill Clayburgh's photo flipped past on the "stars we lost" segment. I'm not sure how I missed hearing about her passing.
My dad took the whole family to see An Unmarried Woman when it came out. He must have had a big crush on Clayburgh, because it wasn't the usual subject matter that he would be drawn to in a film. My mom and I walked out of the theater in love with Alan Bates.
Clayburgh was a great actress, very empathetic. Director and writer Paul Mazursky took a chance that paid off casting her as Erica in his film.
[a very large painting is being lowered to the ground from Saul's loft]
Saul: [shouting up to the loft] OK Mario, I've got it.
Saul: [to Erica] Can you hold this a minute? You got it?
Erica: I got it.
Saul: [Saul opens his car door, looks at Erica, and smiles] Bye.
Erica: What about this?
Saul: Oh, that's for you.
Erica: How the hell am I gonna get it home?
Saul: Take a taxi. [Saul gets in his car and drives off. Erica picks up the painting, struggling with it a bit, and begins walking home]
Clayburgh's character is on her own. She has a (very large) token of her love affair and has decided to go her own way. She knows now that she doesn't need to depend on a man to be happy. She does, however, need to find a pretty large wall for that painting ... As she struggles down a SoHo street, we don't feel that she won't be O.K. She's more than proved that in the film. It's a slice of life from a different time, before AIDs, before the label "single mom" was commonplace. But An Unmarried Woman isn't dated. It's just a good film with a good actress living through what plenty of women still live through every day.
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