Love Is Never Silent
by Joseph Sargent
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DVD details
Actor: Ed Waterstreet, Phyllis FrelichDirector: Joseph Sargent
Primary Contributor: Mare Winningham
Primary Contributor: Cloris Leachman
Primary Contributor: Sid Caesar
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, NTSC
Running Time: 100 minutes
Published: 2009
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Hallmark
Product features:
- First time available on DVD!
DVD Reviews of Love Is Never Silent
DVD Review: Finally On DVD
Summary: 4 Stars
I have been looking for this movie for years. It's based on a book who's name escapes me (I believe it is titled, In This Sign). What was fascinating about the book was that it was written by someone who did not grow up in the deaf community, yet she was able to capture it's essence and the basic distrust the deaf community, especially in the time it was set, has for hearing people.
The mother and father are played by two actors well known in the deaf community (Phyllis Frelich and Ed Waterstreet who are real life spouses. I believe they founded Deaf West Theater in California). Interestingly, Mare Winningham also played Helen Keller in another television production which was also excellent. Winningham does a decent job as the daughter, but I wish they had gotten someone with better fluency as she would have had if she were a child of deaf parents and had been their interpreter all her life (someone like Louise Fletcher who has deaf parents and was actually introduced to acting by an aunt who taught her to speak according to IMDB. And, yes, hearing children of deaf parents may have some speech problems as they may not be hearing speech at home as very young children. That aspect is part of the storyline in the book if not the movie. Although at 51 Louise would have been too old. She was born in 1934). Lou Fant also appears as an interpreter when the mother character retires from her job. He is a child of deaf parents and a well known teacher of sign language and story teller.
It's a story about a family with two hearing kids - a boy and a girl with two deaf parents and their trials and tribulations at the hands of hearing people and because of misunderstandings due to their inability to communicate with the hearing world and it's misperceptions of deaf people, but also deaf people's misperceptions of hearing people. Although they are quite fluent in their communication with each other in their little family unit. At one point, the little brother dies and the little girl has to act as interpreter for her parents as they make funeral arrangements. She feels embarrassed and ashamed of them. They make some attempt to appear more hearing-like (the dad briefly wears an old fashioned hearing aid, which provides no benefit. But he thinks it will please his daughter and only makes her feel more embarrassed and alienated from her classmates). She is able to escape for brief moments when she befriends a neighborhood storekeeper who has a radio.
After many years of saving, they are able to move out of their poor apartment and move into a little house. The daughter meets a serviceman and brings him home to dinner. Cloris Leachman plays his mother and adequately shows the discomfort hearing people have when they are around deaf people do not know sign and don't know how to communicate with them. There is awkwardness as the parents must entertain these strangers and the daughter straddles the hearing world and the deaf world. There is a tender scene when she confronts the parents about what life has been like for her and how she felt about having to act as interpreter and adult because everyone treats her parents as though they are the children and she is the adult as they must communicate to them through her.
I may have mixed some of the storyline with the book, but they are good read and a good watch. Although the book and the movie are somewhat romanticized versions of what hearing people think it is to be deaf in a hearing world. The couple is portrayed as being confused on many accounts and perhaps that may have been true in those earlier part of the last century.
Description of Love Is Never Silent
A young woman (Mare Winningham) struggles with her own need for independence and the obligation she feels for her hearing-impaired parents (Ed Waterstreet, Phyllis Frelich) in this depression-era drama. A friend (Sid Caesar) 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.Bestsellers in DVD
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