Stephen Schiff

“…. Ted has long since realized it was he who drove Joanna away, but what we expect when Joanna takes the witness stand is a heartless manipulator, confident of the court's sympathies. Instead, in a single, devastating speech (which she wrote herself), Streep brings out Joanna's pathos and heroism and gives her argument for custody all the dramatic weight that the movie has already bestowed upon Ted's. It's a searing moment, an apotheosis of screen acting, and it leaves us without mooring, adrift in a wash of discarded principles….

“…. Robert Benton has more than a dollop of Manhattan chauvinism in his blood, and I'm afraid it shows here. California is where Joanna repairs to get her head together, and the first step in that process, of course, is finding a therapist. And so, as attractive as she seems, when Joanna returns saying, "I never knew who I was, but in California I found myself," we can't help thinking she's just a wee bit flaky. Benton emphasizes this effect with a few shots of her watching Billy play from a hiding place nearby. Peering through a thick pane of glass, she looks haunted, even frightening. Then, too, Streep is an unusual screen presence. With her carefully drawn brows, her overdrawn cheekbones and her odd, clownish smile, she's a creature from a Picasso painting, all cubist surfaces and planes. Her voice is very quiet--you can hear a pout in it--and though she radiates coolness and mystery, it's the mystery of a soul in turmoil. Sympathetic she is, and Streep brings such a reservoir of feeling to her relatively few minutes on screen (after the opening, she doesn't return for nearly an hour) that she overwhelms many of our reservations. During the courtroom scene, while Hoffman is on the stand, her face fills with regret, then tenderness and forgiveness, and yet she scarcely moves a muscle. What Streep does under the skin is more than what most actors accomplish with their whole bodies. Yet, Joanna still seems flaky: a good woman, a good mother, but no competition for Dustin Hoffman's reformed Ted Kramer.

“And who could be? In Kramer vs. Kramer Hoffman delivers the finest performance of his career: so deeply felt, so thoughtful and moving that everything he's done before seems like preparation for this portrayal….

Stephen Schiff
Boston Phoenix, Dec. 25, 1979
[get some on film's opening?]