Nancy Savoca’s magical and mysterious 1993 feature film has been unavailable for many years — it was never even released on DVD or Blu-ray – so we are excited to be able to show this brand new restoration. Household Saints, based on the novel by Francine Prose, stars Vincent D’Onofrio as Joseph Santangelo, a butcher in New York’s Little Italy, who wins his wife Catherine (Tracey Ullman) in a Pinochle game. But was it luck or fate that brought them together? The ghost of Joseph’s father opines: “Man deals and God stacks the deck.” And the couple’s daughter Teresa, played by the luminous Lili Taylor, does turn out to be a complicated blessing. 1993, USA, 125 minutes
Director Nancy Savoca and Producer Richard Guay will discuss Household Saints after the screening. Nancy Savoca was the driving force in the creation of Rivertown Film Society. Both Nancy and Rich are among its founders.
When it premiered in 1993, Roger Ebert called Household Saints “a warm-hearted jewel of a movie.” Marjorie Baumgarten in the Austin Chronicle wrote: “Director Savoca is one of our great American storytellers… the performances she gleans from her players are always impeccable… she starts with some of the best talents around and inspires them to new heights. Household Saints restores one’s faith in miracles while teaching us how to invent them ourselves.” Janet Maslin in the New York Times wrote that the film’s plot “is filled with strange, homespun miracles, and this single-minded little film could be counted as one of them,” calling Household Saints “an offbeat, involving story told with perfect confidence.”
