A small town is a hard place to have a big dream.


Directed by
Robert Mandel
Produced by
Robert Singer (producer)
Daniel H. Blatt
Written by
Alice Hoffman
Starring
Kathleen Quinlan
David Keith
Dianne Wiest
Cliff DeYoung
Music by
Charles Bernstein
Cinematography
Charles Rosher Jr.
Edited by
Tina Hirsch
Dennis Virkler
Production
company
Warner Bros. Pictures
Distributed by
Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date
January 21, 1983
Running time
110 min.
Country
United States
Language
English
Box office
$151,462 (USA)
Independence Day is a 1983 film directed by Robert Mandel from a script by the novelist Alice Hoffman. It was designed by Stewart Campbell and shot by Charles Rosher. It stars Kathleen Quinlan, David Keith, Cliff DeYoung, Frances Sternhagen and Dianne Wiest.[1]
The film concerns the small-town life of an artist (Quinlan) and her challenge to become "what she's almost sure she could be." "Her desperation takes the form of affectations and pretensions that are a little like those of the young Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams and the young Margaret Sullavan in The Shop Around the Corner, but the Quinlan character "has the talent driving her on past all that."[2] Wiest plays a battered wife.
The film was reviewed favorably by the critic Pauline Kael in her collection State of the Art: "Kathleen Quinlan plays the part of the woman artist with a cool, wire-taut intensity, Robert Mandel keeps the whole cast interacting quietly and satisfyingly, Wiest has hold of an original character and plays her to the scary hilt."[3] After years only available on VHS, Independence Day got a DVD release by the Warner Archive Collection on November 2015