Love is Never Silent

Since I'm already recommending a book I figured I might as well go ahead and recommend this awesome movie--Love is Never Silent--since it is also on my mind.

Watching this movie was my last assignment in my American Sign Language (ASL) class before our final [which is scheduled for this Friday at 7pm]. As a sociologist I was able to appreciate this movie on a difference level than other students. If you are at all interested in experiencing or understand other cultures then this is a wonderful view. I have read many books and watched many films during my academic career that have focused on the struggles and interactions of individuals (and groups) between two worlds. Love is Never Silent illustrates this exact focus on a young hearing girl and her obligation and desire to be the voice of her deaf parents which communicates and interacts with the hearing world.

Listed below are summaries, reviews, and articles written on the movie. If you are interested in watching this film it is very difficult to find at your local movie store (i.e., Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, etc.). So feel free to order it online or you can go to the LRC (Learning Resource Center at the Harold B. Lee Library on BYU campus) and check it out on VHS. It's definitely worth it!


A young woman struggles with her own need for independence and the obligation she feels for her deaf parents in this depression-era drama. A friend sees her turmoil and tells her she must find happiness on her own. However, the initial joy she finds in marriage starts to strain under the guilt she feels for deserting her parents and the bitterness they express towards her.

In its own mild, unobtrusive manner, the made-for-TV Love is Never Silent managed to knock an all-star adaptation of Alice in Wonderland out of the ratings box when it was first telecast on December 9, 1985. Based on the Joanne Greenberg novel In This Sign, the film stars Mare Winningham as a normally functioning woman with deaf parents. Using sign language, Winningham has spent most of her Depression-era childhood as her parents' only conduit to the outside world. When a close family friend (Sid Caesar in a towering non-comic performance) asks Winningham if she isn't sacrificing the opportunity for happiness on her own, she carefully considers his words. She marries Frederick Lehne, at which point her embittered parents close off their relationship with their daughter. How Ms. Winningham manages to bridge this gap is the focus of the film's final scenes. The parents are played by Ed Waterstreet and Phyllis Frelich, longtime members of the National Theatre for the Deaf.
'LOVE IS NEVER SILENT,' ON DEAFNESS IN A FAMILY

By JOHN CORRY

Published: December 9, 1985
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/09/arts/love-is-never-silent-on-deafness-in-a-family.html

WE have come to expect certain values in a ''Hallmark Hall of Fame'' production: fine actors, lavish sets with scrupulous attention to detail, and what must be called, until a better phrase comes along, family entertainment. We get all this in ''Love Is Never Silent'' on NBC at 9 P.M. tonight.

To be sure, ''family entertainment'' has a slightly pejorative connotation. We think of sentiment and uplift. Actually, there's nothing wrong with either of these qualities, and they're present in the production tonight. The sentiment, however, isn't saccharine, and the uplift isn't cloying. ''Love is Never Silent'' is tough-minded.

The production, based on Joanne Greenberg's novel, ''In This Sign,'' is the story of a young woman (played by Mare Winningham) and her deaf parents (Phyllis Frelich and Ed Waterstreet). The story begins in 1931. There are hard times. We get a tenement neighborhood, the details faithfully recreated. At the same time, much of this is filmed in a soft, golden haze. ''Love is Never Silent'' is an extremely good-looking production.

Miss Winningham is her family's bridge to the speaking world. Miss Frelich and Mr. Waterstreet, both members of the National Theater of the Deaf, live in a world of silence. Their daughter - we see her first at the age of 10, when she is played by Susan Ann Curtis - must even arrange the funeral of her younger brother. She is burdened, and her feelings of guilt, shame, love and duty are in collision.

Miss Winningham, a fetching actress, uses sign language to communicate with Miss Frelich and Mr. Waterstreet. She speaks the lines aloud as well. With the help of Joseph Sargent, the director, she creates a touching character: a young woman torn between her own needs and those of her parents. ''Why can't you understand that - I'm not different,'' she shouts at Miss Frelich. But she is different, of course; her family ensures that.

Thus sacrifices are made. Costs are extracted. For much of the production, Miss Winningham has only Sid Caesar to rely on. Mr. Caesar plays the owner of a pawn shop, supposedly a Greek immigrant. It's nice to see Mr. Caesar on television again, although he does speak in bromides. ''People laugh at me because I talk different,'' he tells Miss Winningham, and ''Where is your life - your happiness?'' Nothing about this seems Greek, incidentally, except that Mr. Caesar wears a fisherman's cap and at one point mentions ouzo.

Meanwhile, Miss Winningham grows up. It is World War II. She meets a nice young man (Fredric Lehne) who, before he goes overseas, proposes marriage. Miss Winningham is reluctant. She says there are things about her he doesn't know. He implores; she finally confesses. Her parents, she says, are deaf.

''Is that it? Is that all?'' he says incredulously. Actually, he's touching on a weakness in ''Love Is Never Silent.'' As touching as much of it is, the family problems do grow a little tiresome. We're hoping Miss Winningham will clear out and lead her own life long before she does. Part of the problem here is that Miss Frelich, who proved in ''Children of a Lesser God'' on Broadway that she is an extremely versatile actress, is giving us a sullen and suspicious mother. She has a wonderfully exuberant scene toward the end, but it's an awfully long time coming.

Still, it is a handsome production - the executive producer is Marian Rees - and it also gives us Cloris Leachman, seen in the small part of Mr. Lehne's mother. Watch Miss Leachman, using one of her agonized smiles, take a dinner-table scene and steal it. ''Love Is Never Silent'' is intelligent and sometimes moving, but it doesn't quite touch us the way it should.