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Kramer vs. Kramer
Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy.
1979 · Directed by Robert Benton · 105 min · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 19 frames
Tagline
There are three sides to this love story.
Plot
When Ted Kramer, a workaholic advertising executive in New York City, shares news of landing an important account and job promotion with his wife Joanna, she announces she is leaving him after eight years of marriage. She leaves without Billy, the couple's seven-year-old son, because she feels she is unfit to be a mother.
Ted and Billy struggle to adapt to their new situation. Ted takes Billy to school, a task Joanna always performed, then confides the news to Jim O'Connor, his boss and friend at work. Jim insists Ted's situation can't interfere with his new responsibility as lead on the Mid-Atlantic Airlines account. Billy misses his mother and Ted has to do chores usually done by Joanna. They settle into a routine, but Ted's work suffers. Billy and Ted argue when Billy refuses to eat Salisbury steak and has ice cream instead. When Billy worries his mother's departure is his fault, Ted assures him Joanna left because she wasn't happy in the marriage. Ted develops a friendship with divorced neighbor Margaret Phelps, with whom Joanna was a confidante. When Billy falls off a jungle gym, Ted rushes him to hospital and stays by his side as he receives stitches.
After fifteen months, Joanna invites Ted to meet her at a restaurant, where she reveals she is happier after working in California, seeing a therapist, and wants Billy to live with her in California. Ted consults with divorce attorney John Shaunessy, who cautions that the court usually awards custody to the mother when the child is young. Ted's agency terminates him when the Mid-Atlantic Airlines executives become displeased with his work. Knowing unemployment will harm his chance at winning child custody, Ted tries to land an industry job during the holiday season and convinces an agency to offer him a lower-salaried position for which he is overqualified.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Robert Benton
- Cinematography: Néstor Almendros
- Edited by: Gerald B. Greenberg
- Music: John Kander, Herb Harris
- Production design: Paul Sylbert
- Produced by: Stanley R. Jaffe
Cast
- Dustin Hoffman as Ted Kramer
- Meryl Streep as Joanna Kramer
- Jane Alexander as Margaret Phelps
- Justin Henry as Billy Kramer
- Howard Duff as John Shaunessy
- George Coe as Jim O'Connor
- JoBeth Williams as Phyllis Bernard
- Bill Moor as Gressen
- Howland Chamberlain as Judge Atkins
- Jack Ramage as Spencer
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Columbia Pictures, Stanley Jaffe Productions
- Budget: $8,000,000
- Box office: $106,260,000
- Themes: husband wife relationship, marriage, custody battle, divorce, family, couple, selfishness, manhattan, new york city, child custody, abandonment
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