David Denby

“After so many mysterious , insubstantial roles, Meryl Streep finally gets to hold the screen in Sophie's Choice… [as] Sophie Zawitowska, the heartbreaking Polish Catholic beauty…. Playing a European, Streep has a firmer identity than she had as any of those American women. We seem to be truly seeing her at last--the golden hair, which takes the light so magnificently, the peaches-and-cream complexion, the body that now, through some will transformation, seems fuller, heavier, more European than we had noticed…. Consuming food, wine, and music with amusement at her own greed, she is radiant yet melancholy, a woman burdened with more grief and guilt than se can easily unload.

“Meryl Streep is perhaps the first actress since the young Ingrid Bergman to make desolation ravishingly sexy. In the early stages of the movie, as Sophie smiles submissively at the fierce Nathan and basks in the adoration of young Stingo (Peter MacNicol), the glumly virginal southern-novelist-in-training, Streep does wonders with her hilarious Polish accent and the excruciating malapropisms that Pakula has invented for her. She makes Sophie a hurt but terribly sweet woman who is dying to take part in everything American. "You want to have a night hat with me?" she inquires fetchingly when Stingo, who also lives in the boardinghouse, returns from a date.

“Streep is great, but she's virtually the whole movie….”

David Denby
New York, December 20, 1982