Film
An Unmarried Woman
This is the quintessential 1970s New York divorce movie: cool, funny, unglamorous about pain. Jill Clayburgh's Erica gets dumped by her husband of sixteen years and has to relearn how to be a person alone, one humiliating therapy session and one SoHo gallery party at a time. Warm rather than bleak, it's for anyone who wants a story about starting over that trusts a woman's inner life enough to leave it messy.
If you liked this
Kramer vs. Kramer1979
The same divorce-era moment from the other side of the bed — Dustin Hoffman fumbling through single fatherhood while his career collapses. It won every award going and still lands, unsentimental about how hard rebuilding actually is.
But The custody-battle framing means the wife's inner life gets far less room than Erica's does here — a fairer companion piece than a substitute.
Starting Over1979no page yet
Burt Reynolds plays the recently divorced man for once — funny, anxious, useless at dating — in a comedy that takes the same New York milieu and turns the volume up on the jokes without losing the ache.
But It's lighter and more conventionally structured as romantic comedy; the emotional stakes never bite quite as hard.
Private Benjamin1980
Goldie Hawn's pampered widow enlists in the Army and discovers, painfully and hilariously, that she can survive without a man organising her life — the same liberation arc played as broad comedy.
But It trades psychological nuance for slapstick; you're watching a cartoon of self-discovery rather than a study of one.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
A Woman Under the Influence1974
Both films watch a woman's identity come apart inside a marriage and its aftermath, but where Mazursky gives Erica chic apartments and dry humour to survive on, Cassavetes strips all of that away and makes you sit in the room while it happens.
Gena Rowlands plays a wife and mother whose mental breakdown Cassavetes refuses to soften or explain — handheld, unbearably intimate, one of the rawest performances ever put on film.
But It offers none of the wit or narrative comfort of An Unmarried Woman — this is a much harder, more exhausting watch.
More like this (8)
Terms of Endearment1983
A mother and daughter navigate divorce, remarriage and worse across two decades, with Shirley MacLaine giving one of the great performances of difficult, unfinished womanhood.
But It swerves into serious tragedy in its final act — go in braced, it's a very different emotional register by the end.
Shirley Valentine1989no page yet
A Liverpool housewife talks to her kitchen wall about the life she didn't get to live, then goes to Greece and starts living it — warmer and funnier than it sounds, just as interested in a woman rebuilding desire from scratch.
But It's stagier, adapted from a one-woman play, and leans harder into wish-fulfilment than Erica's more ambivalent ending.
Enough Said2013no page yet
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, divorced and dating again in middle age, in a comedy that's gentle where it could be cruel and honest about how much baggage a second chance actually carries.
But It's a smaller, quieter film with much lower stakes — nobody's identity is collapsing here, just adjusting.
Blue Jasmine2013no page yet
Cate Blanchett unravels spectacularly after her wealthy marriage implodes, in a film that takes the same premise — moneyed woman, sudden freefall — and pushes it toward tragedy and near-comic delusion.
But Jasmine is much less sympathetic than Erica; this is a darker, more punishing character study.
Eat Pray Love2010no page yet
Julia Roberts leaves her marriage and travels the world to rebuild herself, hitting many of the same beats — food, sex, therapy-by-other-means — with a glossier, more optimistic sheen.
But It's considerably softer and more self-help in its philosophy; the messiness here gets tidied into wisdom.
Girlfriends1978
A contemporary of An Unmarried Woman, made by a woman director on a fraction of the budget, about a single photographer in New York figuring out independence and friendship without a marriage to leave.
But It's rougher, low-budget indie filmmaking — less polished, less starry, but arguably closer to the ground.
Scener ur ett äktenskap1973
Same subject, a marriage ending and a self being rebuilt from the wreckage, but stretched into hours of two-person dialogue instead of compressed into a single New York year — the format itself becomes the difference.
Bergman's six-part dissection of a Swedish marriage's slow, articulate collapse — two people talking, almost nothing else — is the deep, patient version of the conversation An Unmarried Woman has in ninety fewer minutes and one fewer language.
But It's subtitled, talky, and built for a long sit — no gallery parties or dry Manhattan jokes to lighten it.
3 Women1977
Both are 1970s films asking what's left of a woman when the identity she'd built through others collapses, but Altman answers with dream logic and body horror instead of therapy and dry comedy.
Altman's woozy, half-horror fable about three women whose identities blur and swap in a desert apartment complex takes the same era's obsession with female selfhood and pushes it into something genuinely strange and dreamlike.
But It abandons naturalism almost entirely — if you want Erica's grounded Manhattan realism, this surreal detour may frustrate rather than satisfy.
People
Cast
Jill ClayburghErica Benton
Alan BatesSaul Kaplan
Michael MurphyMartin Benton
Cliff GormanCharlie
Kelly BishopElaine Liebowitz
Lisa LucasPatti Benton
Linda MillerJeannette Lewin
Patricia QuinnSue Miller
- Daniel SeltzerDr. Arthur Jacobs
Matthew ArkinPhil- Penelope RussianoffDr. Tanya Berkel
Directing
- Paul MazurskyDirector
Writing
- Paul MazurskyWriter
Production
- Anthony RayProducer
- Paul MazurskyProducer