How Smithereens cap­tured the scuzzy charm of post-punk New York

Susan Seidelman’s lo-fi New York debut, Smithereens, not only defined the director’s ear­ly career, serv­ing as a pre­cur­sor to her bet­ter-known Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan, it was also one of the defin­ing post-punk films of the era. The film exists today as a time cap­sule of pre-gen­tri­fi­ca­tion New York. Every shot is caked in urban decay, with the city fea­tur­ing almost as a cen­tral char­ac­ter along­side day­dream­ing punk pro­tag­o­nist Wren (played with rel­ish by Susan Berman).

Released in 1982, the film coin­cid­ed with new albums by Bad Reli­gion, Flip­per, Bad Brains and Descen­dents. While punk was being quick­ly laid to rest in the UK thanks to the emer­gence of synth-based elec­tro-pop, the US clung on thanks in part to leg­endary venues such as New York’s CBG­Bs. The same year saw the release of sev­er­al films sim­i­lar in both tone and spir­it to Smithereens: punk porno Café Flesh; revenge dra­ma Class of 1984; berserko sci-fi Liq­uid Sky; and punk musi­cal Ladies and Gen­tle­men, The Fab­u­lous Stains, star­ring – of all peo­ple – Diane Lane.

Smithereens’ spunky, nev­er-take-no-for-an-answer hero­ine is in many ways a pre­cur­sor to Madonna’s famous role as Susan Thomas, with cer­tain char­ac­ter traits fil­ter­ing through to Ann Magnuson’s Frankie Stone in Seidelman’s 1987 film Mak­ing Mr Right and lat­er Emi­ly Lloyd’s Cook­ie Voltec­ki in 1989’s Cook­ie.

At first Wren is like­able enough, but as the film unfolds her true colours begin to show. She’s a user. Not of drugs but of peo­ple, con­stant­ly run­ning her mouth and attempt­ing to fleece strangers. This is a sto­ry of sur­vival, and Wren is the film’s street-smart, tough-talk­ing, gum-chew­ing heart. There’s some­thing at once charm­ing and intrigu­ing about her. After all, who doesn’t love a chancer?

It’s not long before Wren’s path cross­es two very dif­fer­ent men, Eric (real-life rock­er Richard Hell essen­tial­ly play­ing him­self) and Paul (Brad Rinn), whose inter­est in Wren is spurned by her obvi­ous attrac­tion to Eric, the slouchy bad boy of the piece. Thank­ful­ly Smithereens doesn’t segue into an Eric ver­sus Paul sce­nario. Wren’s quest for suc­cess and self-improve­ment remains at the fore as she bounces around NYC, graft­ing and hus­tling. But Hell’s char­ac­ter is a tricky mark. It’s clear he has his own agenda.

Noth­ing goes quite to plan for Wren. Her destruc­tive fling with Eric is lit­tle more than a fan­ta­sy she ini­tial­ly liked the sound of and sold to her­self. In real­i­ty, Eric is only out for him­self and has no inten­tion of leav­ing the city with­out first lin­ing his pock­ets. He drags Wren down with him while she con­tin­ues to rebuff Paul. By the end of the film, Wren has burned all her bridges with her habit­u­al free­load­ing and unful­filled promis­es. The city starts to chew her up. So she hits the road.

It’s hard to imag­ine any­one in the real world tol­er­at­ing Wren for more than five min­utes, but Berman’s engag­ing per­for­mance car­ries the entire film. It’s hard­ly sur­pris­ing that it became her call­ing card, although after Smithereens her act­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties were lim­it­ed before she final­ly land­ed one last bit part in 1993’s Biki­ni Car­wash Com­pa­ny II. As New York became increas­ing­ly gen­tri­fied, it swal­lowed up Berman just as it had Wren.

After the suc­cess of Des­per­ate­ly Seek­ing Susan, Sei­del­man grad­u­al­ly pulled away from inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma, and over the course of the next decade she reestab­lished her­self in tele­vi­sion, even­tu­al­ly direct­ing the pilot episode of Sex and the City in 1998. But it all start­ed with that raw but ful­ly realised 1982 debut, dri­ven by two incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed women: a young film­mak­er who poured her love of an under­ground scene into one of its defin­ing por­traits; and an actor who made her mark in style and dis­ap­peared almost as sud­den­ly as she appeared.

Smithereens is released on Blu-ray on 27 August via The Cri­te­ri­on Collection.