An Analysis of Streep's Impact in The Bridges of Madison County and Its Success in the 1990s

Streep's most successful film of the decade was the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County directed by Clint Eastwood, who adapted the film from Robert James Waller's novel of the same name. It relates the story of Robert Kincaid (Eastwood), a photographer working for National Geographic, who has a love affair with a middle-aged Italian farm wife Francesca (Streep). Though Streep disliked the novel it was based on, she found the script to be a special opportunity for an actress her age. She gained weight for the part and dressed differently from the character in the book to emulate voluptuous Italian film stars such as Sophia Loren. Both Loren and Anna Magnani were an influence in her portrayal, and Streep viewed Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma (1962) prior to filming. The film was a box office hit and grossed over $70 million in the United States. The film, unlike the novel, was warmly received by critics. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Eastwood had managed to create 'a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill', while Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal described it as 'one of the most pleasurable films in recent memory'. Longworth believes that Streep's performance was 'crucial to transforming what could have been a weak soap opera into a vibrant work of historical fiction implicitly critiquing postwar America's stifling culture of domesticity'. She considers it to have been the role in which Streep became 'arguably the first middle-aged actress to be taken seriously by Hollywood as a romantic heroine'.