General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Smithereens (1982 film)

Smithereens is a 1982 American independent drama film directed by Susan Seidelman, her debut feature, about Wren (Susan Berman), a narcissistic young woman who leaves New Jersey for downtown New York City hoping to become famous in the fading punk scene, attaching herself to Paul (Brad Rinn), a kindly drifter living in his van, and Eric (Richard Hell), an aloof, washed-up rocker. Shot on 16 mm film, it was the first American independent film to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / debut	Susan Seidelman's first feature, made after NYU film school with a crew of former classmates²
Cast	Susan Berman (Wren), Brad Rinn (Paul), Richard Hell (Eric), with Nada Despotovich, Roger Jett, and Kitty Summerall¹
Cannes 1982	In Competition for the Palme d'Or, the first American independent film to do so; listed as a first film³
Format	16 mm color, 93 minutes, 1.66:1 aspect ratio, English¹
Budget	$25,000 raised from family and friends, later increased to $80,000 after a production shutdown²
Music	Composed and performed by Glenn Mercer and Bill Million of the Feelies¹
Release	New York opening 19 November 1982; Los Angeles 12 January 1983; distributed by New Line Cinema²
Restoration	Director-approved 2K digital restoration, Criterion Collection spine #941¹

Spoilers

Plot and characters

Wren fancies herself an up-and-coming rock star, though she has no discernible talent. She steals sunglasses from pedestrians, pastes xeroxed flyers of her own face around the city and inside subway trains, and sneaks into shows at the Peppermint Lounge, a nightclub for New Wave rockers.²^•⁴ Paul, a plainly dressed newcomer from Montana living in a spray-painted van by the highway, is smitten when she hands him one of her handbills, which ask "Who is this?"²

Wren rejects Paul's affections in favor of Eric, a bygone rock star and former front man of the band "Smithereens," who plans to move to Los Angeles to revive his career. Besotted, Wren chases Eric and vies for his attention, believing he can bolster her career, while Paul leaves in anger. The film follows her parasitic relationships and shifting allegiances as she tries to find someone who will finance her desired lifestyle, and it becomes clear she has put her trust in the wrong person.²^•⁵

Production

Seidelman moved to New York City in the mid-1970s to attend NYU film school, and drew the story from the downtown street culture she found there. The screenplay was written by Ron Nyswaner and Peter Askin, based on a story by Seidelman and Nyswaner, about a young woman who escapes the New Jersey suburbs for the East Village punk-music scene.⁶^•¹

A troubled shoot. According to the AFI Catalog, drawing on 1983 articles in the Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone, Seidelman began production in the summer of 1980 with a $25,000 budget financed by family and friends, and a five-week shooting schedule in New York City on 16 mm film. By the end of the second week the production had spent $18,000 when lead actress Susan Berman broke her leg. The shutdown let Seidelman screen existing footage for potential investors, raising the budget to $80,000; photography ultimately took place over seven weeks spanning a year, and an edited version was completed in March 1982.² Seidelman's own account in Filmmaker Magazine dates the start of shooting to the spring of 1979, and notes that production shut down for six months before resuming in early 1981.⁶^•⁷ A Criterion essay gives the overall cost as forty thousand dollars.⁴

After completing the edit, Seidelman screened the film for director Jonathan Demme, who advised her to make several changes; she also cut fifteen minutes because she was uncomfortable with the length. While finishing edits in March 1982 she applied to festivals and received a response from Cannes, agreeing to screen the still largely unseen film for Cannes representative Pierre-Henri Deleau, who was in New York securing entries for Directors' Fortnight.² The film was accepted to the festival and then picked up for distribution by New Line Cinema; Seidelman notes there were no indie production companies she was aware of at the time.⁶

The production was filmed on location, permit-free, in areas such as the East Village and SoHo, and the derelict structures and vacant lots of a metropolis newly emerged from fiscal collapse proved central to the picture's rough-edged look.⁴ Many Manhattan artists, musicians, and actors from the scene it chronicles were involved in the making of the movie.⁷

Cannes and release

At the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Smithereens was listed In Competition among the Feature Films as a first film, sharing the lineup with works by Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, and Costa-Gavras.³ It was the first American independent film selected for competition at Cannes.⁸ The film opened in New York on 19 November 1982 and in Los Angeles on 12 January 1983, distributed by New Line Cinema Distribution Corp.²

Style and reception

The film blends New York realism with a slightly heightened, stylized approach, shot in a guerrilla, faux-documentary manner on the streets of Manhattan, including scenes at the Peppermint Lounge.⁹^•¹⁰ Critics noted its European influences, namely Italian neorealism and the French new wave, and its portrait of a New York rife with now-famous musicians and artists who were just starting out.¹¹

Janet Maslin, reviewing in The New York Times in 1982, credited Susan Berman's feisty performance and the vitality of the storytelling for the film's fast start, and compared Wren to other "punk screen heroines" of the era, writing that they "seem to wake, sleep, live, and breathe with an utter spontaneity bordering on recklessness." She also observed that the character never becomes more thoughtful or less selfish, and that the film runs out of steam before the end.⁸^•¹⁰ On Metacritic the film holds a score of 72 based on 7 critic reviews, in the "generally favorable" range.¹⁰ Slant Magazine called it "as unsparing a sketch of twentysomething life in New York City as American independent cinema has yet offered."¹⁰

Legacy

The film put Seidelman on the map, bridging her career from NYU student to independent feature filmmaker to Hollywood director, and established her authorial sensibility of melding complicated female characters with cityscapes.¹¹ Her next film, Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), starring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette, was made for the considerably more generous budget of $4.5 million.⁸

Smithereens endures as a document of downtown New York in the very early 1980s, capturing the grit and glam of the era on 16 mm with an alternately moody and frenetic soundtrack by the Feelies and others. It has been sidelined in some discussions of New York and punk filmmaking, in part because of critics' reactions to the brusque and at times chaotic Wren, yet its appeal persists.¹^•¹¹ The Museum of Modern Art holds the film in its collection and has preserved it.¹²^•⁹ The Criterion Collection released a director-approved special edition (spine #941) with a new 2K restoration, a 2004 audio commentary by Seidelman, new interviews with Seidelman and Berman, and two of Seidelman's early shorts, And You Act Like One Too (1976) and Yours Truly, Andrea G. Stern (1979).¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026