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John Cassavetes
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John Cassavetes, the actor, writer and director, was one of the most influential American film-makers of the post-war era - a big claim, since he only had one hit movie and made many which were only shown in art houses. But, at one time, there was scarcely a film-maker who was not inspired by his improvisatory work and his capacity to achieve exceptional performances from actors. He has been called the first American independent.
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John Cassavetes, at the dawn of his filmmaking career, is the subject of this portrait. The almost universally imitated father of American independent film, Cassavetes eventually made twelve films, including The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Gloria and A Woman Under the Influence. JOHN CASSAVETES was shot in Los Angeles in 1965, just after Cassavetes completed shooting Faces, and continues in Paris in 1968.
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John Cassavetes, one of the film business' first truly independent directors, specialized in a kind of semi-improvised, emotionally wrenching brand of naturalism, which usually tended to polarize audiences. Opening Night, along with A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Love Streams (1984), all starring his wife, Gena Rowlands, could be thought of as his trilogy on a woman's emotional disintegration. The loosely constructed script concerns the eagerness of the cast of a play in rehearsal to avoid confronting the lead actress about the damage her alcoholism is doing to the production. When a possibly imagined tragedy spins the actress into a sort of breakdown, no one seems to be able to help. As usual, Cassavetes gives the actors free rein, and there are some overindulgent scenes. Yet there is far more truth in this gritty film than in a year of Hollywood's output combined.
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The enduring brilliance of John Cassavetes's Shadows hangs on those eight words, spoken by Lelia after losing her virginity to Tony. The jazz hipsterisms may have gotten quaint and the civil rights movement may have made the racial storyline a bit passé in the decades since the film first blew the minds of critics and art house audiences, but that line of dialogue remains as searingly honest as anything in cinema today or at any other time. Hollywood's vision of interplay between the sexes in the late 1950s is perhaps best exemplified by the fluffy, sterile, Technicolor world of 1959's Pillow Talk, a breezy romantic farce whose Eros is sublimated in witty banter. Showing husband and wife in bed together was verboten, let alone an unmarried couple, and the unspoken idea of sexual consummation was as dreamy and perfect as Doris Day and Rock Hudson's hair and wardrobe. That Cassavetes had the audacity not only to show us an unmarried couple post-coital but to suggest a young woman's sexual initiation could be something other than a romantic ideal, is and continues to be a stunning commitment to the truth in a cinema whose established categories are designed to avoid the messy, uncomfortable parts of life.
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Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow), the young wife of a struggling actor (John Cassavetes), is thrilled to find out she's pregnant. But the larger her belly grows, the more certain she becomes that her unborn child is in danger. Read More
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At times pretentious, but always pioneering, John Cassavetes' independent spirit and affinity for very human stories is wonderfully captured in Criterion's stellar effort. The meticulous restorations and comprehensive content do not disappoint. These forces of American cinema have taken shape as one of the best and most important DVD releases of the year.
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John Cassavetes