There may be no place in the world that seems quite as civilized and reassuring as Manhattan's East Side--when you're feeling good and have money in your pocket. It's expensive but value is given. It's a privilege simply to look into the windows of Madison Avenue boutiques that keep their doors bolted against customers who don't measure up. The sidewalk musicians on Fifth Avenue play Purcell and Vivaldi and one never has to travel very far to find a restaurant where the food is worth the king's ransom it costs. Unlike those on the West Side, most of the apartment building doormen on the East Side wear uniforms that differentiate them from the muggers. Everything seems forever.

When things are going wrong, though, Manhattan's East Side immediately reflects the unhappiness of an upwardly mobile people who have no idea where they're going or why. Everything is ridiculously expensive. Walls are thin and ceilings low. Cab drivers are rude. Husbands are self-centered and unreliable and wives, who have been urged to realize themselves, start by seeing an analyst. As rats command the sewers, vaguely understood fears run amok through the corridors of the fancy new high-rises above.

This is the hermetic world of Robert Benton's fine, witty, moving, most intelligent adaptation of Avery Corman's best-selling novel, "Kramer vs. Kramer," which opens today at Loews Tower East and other theaters.

"Kramer vs. Kramer" is a Manhattan movie, yet it seems to speak for an entire generation of middle-class Americans who came to maturity in the late 60's and early 70's, sophisticated in superficial ways but still expecting the fulfillment of promises made in the more pious Eisenhower era.

Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is a self-described take-over guy who left Brooklyn for Manhattan's East Side and is speeding to the top at his advertising agency. Everything in his life is working out as planned. When "Kramer vs. Kramer" opens, the elated Ted has just been handed his agency's most valued new account. As he says a few minutes later, this has been one of the five best days of his life.

It is with some surprise, then, that he returns home to find his wife, Joanna (Meryl Streep), jaw-set and teary-eyed, determined to depart forever, leaving Ted not only with an entire ad presentation to prepare for the next day but also with their six-year-old son, Billy (Justin Henry), to take care of. Ted is not someone who always gets his priorities straight.

"Kramer vs. Kramer" is one of those rare American movies that never have to talk importantly and self-consciously to let you know that it has to do with many more things than are explicitly stated. It's about fathers and sons, husbands and wives, and most particularly, perhaps, about failed expectations of a certain breed of woman in this day and age.

Though much of "Kramer vs. Kramer" is occupied with the growing relationship between the abandoned father and son, through tantrums and reconcilations and playground accidents, the central figure is that of the movingly, almost dangerously muddled mother, played by Miss Streep in what is one of the major performances of the year. Joanna is not an easily appealing character, especially when she returns after 18 months of therapy in California and seeks legal custody of the child she walked out on.

Though beautiful, intelligent, well-educated and no more than casually self-assertive at the start, she grows into one of those fiercely determined people who talks about "finding" herself even as we--and she--suspect there may be nothing to find except another series of compromises. She seems to be a woman in transit to disappointment. Maybe not. She's not a character who can be conveniently categorized, and she is fascinating.

Mr. Hoffman is splendid in one of the two or three best roles of his career. It's a delicately witty performance, funny and full of feeling that never slops over into the banal, which is the greatest danger faced by an actor who must play most of his scenes with a small boy who is as down-to-earth and pragmatic as Justin Henry. There is no way that Mr. Hoffman can avoid being upstaged when Billy, watching his father make a mess of French toast, says carefully, "I don't like it folded."

"Kramer vs. Kramer" is densely packed with such beautifully observed detail. It is also superbly acted by its supporting cast, including Jane Alexander, Howard Duff and George Coe.

The man responsible for the photography is the gifted Nestor Almendros, whose earlier credits include Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," Francois Truffaut's "The Story of Adele H." and Eric Rohmer's "Clair's Knee," among other things. The Manhattan he shows us is familiar enough but we see a lot more than a series of pretty surfaces.

"Kramer vs. Kramer," which has been rated PG ("Parental Guidance Suggested"), contains some mildly vulgar language and some discreet nudity.

KRAMER VS. KRAMER

With Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Jane Alexander, Justin Henry, Howard Duff, George Coe, Jobeth Williams, Bill Moor, Howland Chamberlain, Jack Ramage, Jess Osuna, Nicholas Hormann, Ellen Parker and Shelby Brammer.

Directed and written by Robert Benton; from the novel by Avery Corman; director of photography, Nestor Almendros; edited by Jerry Greenberg; music by Henry Purcell and Antonio Vivaldi; produced by Stanley R Jaffe; released by Columbia Pictures. At Loews Tower East.