‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. It’s Thanksgiving, 1973, and in New Canaan, as elsewhere, kids have come home from school and families have gathered to celebrate the traditional start of the holiday season. That’s the backdrop of The Ice Storm, the 1997 masterpiece of suburban affluence, family dysfunction and quiet desperation. Directed by Ang Lee, the screenplay written by James Schamus was adopted from the 1994 novel of the same name by former New Canaan resident Rick Moody. The Ice Storm was filmed primarily in New Canaan; in fact there is so much of New Canaan presented on screen – Town Hall, the Metro-North Station, the old Varnum’s Pharmacy, Saxe playing fields, the (original) New Canaan Library, and several Mid-Century Modern homes nestled in our hilly woods – that it is difficult to imagine any other town filling the void.
Ironically one of the few scenes that was not shot in New Canaan, the infamous Thanksgiving night “key party” gathering, was actually filmed in Greenwich. The Ice Storm featured a mix of then seasoned and up-and-coming actors, including Kevin Kline and Joan Allen as Ben and Elena Hood (701 Laurel Road), and Jamie Sheridan and Sigourney Weaver as their best friends and neighbors, Jim and Janey Carver (581 Laurel Road); filming at both addresses included exterior and interior shots. Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes and Allison Janney rounded out the outstanding cast.
The film grossed only $16 million worldwide, but was highly acclaimed critically, including receipt of the Palme d’Or for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival and Gene Siskel lauding it as his favorite film of 1997.
