Mabel Longhetti, a Los Angeles housewife and mother, sends her three children, Tony, Angelo and Maria, to spend the night with her mother but is extremely hesitant to do so. She is a heavy drinker and exhibits strange behavior. An unexpected pipe leak forces her husband, Nick, a construction foreman, to cancel their date night over the phone, and Mabel is devastated. That night, drunk, she meets a man at a bar, Garson, who offers her some more drinks, and then he takes her home almost passed out. Despite her protests, he forces her to dance with him and appears to sexually assault her at the bottom of the stairs, while she hits him with her handbag.
She wakes up the next morning in bed and the man is still there. She is confused and briefly argues with him before he leaves, calling him by her husband's name and warning him that she's not in the mood for games. Later the same day, Nick brings his 11 member crew over to the house without calling Mabel beforehand. Mabel makes everyone spaghetti and they all sit at the table together to eat. Mabel seems extemely polite and warm to all Nick's colleagues. The meal is superficially pleasant, with Mabel asking each one of Nick's coworkers if they have children. Finally, Nick snaps at Mabel for making one of his men feel uncomfortable by being overly warm to him. The next day, Nick has an early wake up when his mother-in-law and their three children stop over before school, invading the couple's bedroom and making Mabel nervous.
Mabel's strange mannerisms and increasingly odd behavior continue to be a source of concern for Nick. She hosts a birthday party, but one of the child's parents, Mr Jensen, becomes disturbed by her behavior and is reluctant to leave his children alone with her, asking if she's been drinking. When Nick comes home, he finds all the children run wild, halfnaked, and he gets into a fistfight with Jensen, who then leaves with his children. Nick also angrily slaps Mabel in front of the children. He brings the doctor who treats her, Dr Zepp, to evaluate her mental health. Mabel grows increasingly angry and suspicious and Nick fights off the doctor when he attempts to sedate her, while repeating to Mabel that he loves her. His mother, Margaret, accuses Mabel of being a bad mother, drinking all the time, and leaving her children hungry and naked. She offers nothing to her son, she says, and the other day she had brought another man to the house. Convinced she has become a threat to herself and others, the doctor institutionalizes her, while Mabel grabs her children in despair.
Nick returns to work and is annoyed by the workers' interest in Mabel's situation. He gets into an altercation with a worker, who falls down a hill and is severely injured. He picks up the children from school in the middle of the day to go to the beach and allows them to sip his beer.
Six months later, Nick plans a large surprise welcome home party for Mabel's return from the institution. However, his mother points out that this may be overwhelming for her, and Nick asks all of the non-family guests to leave. When Mabel arrives, she is apprehensive and quiet, in great contrast to her former outgoing and eccentric personality. Nick tries to make her feel comfortable, telling her that he is with her and the hell with all the others, but to no avail. The evening degenerates in yet another emotional and psychologically taxing event for Mabel. She reveals she underwent electroshock therapy in the mental hospital and becomes increasingly distraught, while at the same time, she asks all the family guests to go home, because she and Nick want to go to bed together, making all, once again, feel awkward.
After the guests leave, Mabel has a breakdown and cuts herself. When she stands on a sofa, bleeding, and refuses to come down, Nick slaps her and causes her to fall in front of their distraught children. She appears to recover somewhat and puts the kids to bed while they express their love for her. Nick and Mabel prepare their bed together as the credits roll.
John Cassavetes was inspired to write A Woman Under the Influence when his wife Gena Rowlands expressed a desire to appear in a play about the difficulties faced by contemporary women. His completed script was so intense and emotional she knew she would be unable to perform it eight times a week, so he decided to adapt it for the screen. When he tried to raise funding for the project, he was told "No one wants to see a crazy, middle-aged dame."[6]
Lacking studio financing, Cassavetes mortgaged his house and borrowed from family and friends, one of whom was Peter Falk, who liked the screenplay so much he invested $500,000 in the project.[6] The crew consisted of professionals and students from the American Film Institute, where Cassavetes was serving as the first "filmmaker in residence" at their Center for Advanced Film Studies. Working with a limited budget forced him to shoot scenes in a real house near Hollywood Boulevard, and Rowlands was responsible for her own hairstyling and makeup.[6]
Upon completion of the film, Cassavetes was unable to find a distributor, so he personally called theater owners and asked them to run the film. According to college student Jeff Lipsky, who was hired to help distribute the film, "It was the first time in the history of motion pictures that an independent film was distributed without the use of a nationwide system of sub-distributors." It was booked into art houses and shown on college campuses, where Cassavetes and Falk discussed it with the audience.[6] It was shown at the San Sebastián Film Festival, where Rowlands was named Best Actress and Cassavetes won the Silver Shell Award for Best Director, and the New York Film Festival, where it captured the attention of film critics like Rex Reed. When Richard Dreyfuss appeared on The Mike Douglas Show with Peter Falk, he described the film as "the most incredible, disturbing, scary, brilliant, dark, sad, depressing movie" and added "I went crazy. I went home and vomited," which prompted curious audiences to seek out the film capable of making Dreyfuss (who is himself bipolar) ill.[6]
Reception and legacy
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 35 reviews, with a rating average of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Electrified by searing performances from Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, A Woman Under the Influence finds pioneering independent filmmaker John Cassavetes working at his artistic peak."[7]
Nora Sayre of The New York Times observed "Miss Rowlands unleashes an extraordinary characterization....The actress’s style of performing sometimes shows a kinship with that of the early Kim Stanley or the recent Joanne Woodward, but the notes of desperation are emphatically her own....Peter Falk gives a rousing performance...and the children are very well directed. But the movie didn't need to be 2 hours and 35 minutes long: there's too much small talk, which doesn't really reveal character. Still, the most frightening scenes are extremely compelling, and this is a thoughtful film that does prompt serious discussion."[8]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film four out of four stars and called it "terribly complicated, involved and fascinating – a revelation." He added "The characters are larger than life (although not less convincing because of that), and their loves and rages, their fights and moments of tenderness, exist at exhausting levels of emotion. [...] Cassavetes is strongest as a writer and filmmaker at creating specific characters and then sticking with them through long, painful, uncompromising scenes until we know them well enough to read them, to predict what they'll do next and even to begin to understand why."[9] Ebert later added the film to his "Great Movies" list, in which he called the film "perhaps the greatest of Cassavetes' films."[10]
Time Out London wrote "The brilliance of the film lies in its sympathetic and humorous exposure of social structure. Rowlands unfortunately overdoes the manic psychosis at times, and lapses into a melodramatic style which is unconvincing and unsympathetic; but Falk is persuasively insane as the husband; and the result is an astonishing, compulsive film, directed with a crackling energy."[11]
TV Guide rated the film four out of four stars, calling it "tough-minded" and "moving" and "an insightful essay on sexual politics."[12]
In Sight and Sound's 2012 poll on the greatest films of all time, the film placed 59th in the directors' poll and 144th in the critics' poll.[17] In 2015, the BBC named A Woman Under the Influence the 31st greatest American film ever made.[18]
In 1990, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", one of the first fifty films to be so honored.[19][20]
Restoration and preservation
The world premiere screening of a restored print was held at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on April 26, 2009, as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Gena Rowlands was in attendance and spoke briefly. The restoration was done by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by Gucci and the Film Foundation.[citation needed]
In 1992 Touchstone Home Video released the movie on VHS.[27]
On September 21, 2004, the film was released in Region 1 – together with Shadows, Faces, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night – as part of the eight-disc box set John Cassavetes – Five Films by The Criterion Collection. The film is in anamorphic widescreen format with an English audiotrack. Bonus features include commentary by sound recordist and composer Bo Harwood and camera operator Mike Ferris and interviews with Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk. On October 22, 2013, the box set was re-released on Blu-ray.[28]
Shadows is a 1959 American independent drama film directed by John Cassavetes about race relations during the Beat Generation years in New York City. The film stars Ben Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni, and Hugh Hurd as three black siblings, though only one of them is dark-skinned enough to be considered African American. The film was initially shot in 1957 and shown in 1958, but a poor reception prompted Cassavetes to rework it in 1959. Promoted as a completely improvisational film, it was intensively rehearsed in 1957, and in 1959 it was fully scripted.
Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlands is an American retired actress, whose career in film, stage, and television has spanned nearly seven decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she is known for her collaborations with her actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films, including A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980), both of which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Opening Night (1977). She is also known for her performances in Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988), and her son Nick Cassavetes's film, The Notebook (2004). In 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker said, “The most important and original movie actor of the past half century-plus is Gena Rowlands.” In November 2015, Rowlands received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her unique screen performances.
Gloria is a 1980 American neo-noir crime thriller film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It tells the story of a gangster's former girlfriend who goes on the run with a young boy who is being hunted by the mob for information he may or may not have. It stars Gena Rowlands, Julie Carmen, Buck Henry, and John Adames.
John Nicholas Cassavetes was a Greek-American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often producing and distributing his films with his own money. He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.
Faces is a 1968 American drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It stars John Marley, Gena Rowlands, Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassel, Fred Draper, and Val Avery.
Nicholas David Rowland Cassavetes is an American actor, director, and writer. He has directed such films as She's So Lovely (1997), John Q. (2002), The Notebook (2004), Alpha Dog (2006), and My Sister's Keeper (2009). His acting credits include an uncredited role in Husbands (1970)—which was directed by his father, John Cassavetes—as well as roles in the films The Wraith (1986), Face/Off (1997), and Blow (2001).
Alexandra "Xan" Cassavetes is an American actress and director. She is the daughter of Greek-American actor-director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands. She is the granddaughter of actress Katherine Cassavetes. She is the sister of actor-director Nick Cassavetes and actor-screenwriter-director Zoe Cassavetes.
She's So Lovely is a 1997 American romantic drama film directed by Nick Cassavetes, written by John Cassavetes. At the time of its release, it received special attention because, eight years after his death, it was the first posthumous film to feature previously unreleased material from John Cassavetes. The film stars Sean Penn and John Travolta as the respective male leads of whom bid for the affection of Maureen Murphy Quinn. Harry Dean Stanton co-stars as a friend of Penn's character, and James Gandolfini plays the abusive neighbor.
Opening Night is a 1977 American psychological drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes, and starring Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, Joan Blondell, Paul Stewart, Zohra Lampert, and Cassavetes. Its plot follows a stage actress who, after witnessing the accidental death of one of her fans, is haunted by a recurring apparition of the deceased woman, spurring a nervous breakdown while she prepares for the premiere of a Broadway play.
Love Streams is a 1984 American film directed by John Cassavetes, in what would be his final independent feature and penultimate directorial project. The film tells the story of a middle-aged brother (Cassavetes) and sister who find themselves relying on one another after being abandoned by their loved ones.
Katherine Cassavetes was an American actress. She was the mother of actor-director John Cassavetes and mother-in-law of actress Gena Rowlands. Her grandchildren are actor-directors Nick Cassavetes, Zoe Cassavetes, and Alexandra Cassavetes. She appeared in four films, three of which were written and directed by her son, including Minnie and Moskowitz (1971).
Minnie and Moskowitz is a 1971 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes and starring his wife Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel in the title roles of Minnie and Moskowitz, respectively.
A Child Is Waiting is a 1963 American drama film written by Abby Mann based on his 1957 Westinghouse Studio One teleplay of the same name. The film was produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by John Cassavetes. Burt Lancaster portrays the director of a state institution for children with intellectual disabilities or who were emotionally disturbed, and Judy Garland is a new teacher who challenges his methods.
All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is the fifth studio album from American post-rock band Explosions in the Sky. It was released February 20, 2007.
Broken English is a 2007 American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes, in her feature directorial debut. The film stars Parker Posey, Melvil Poupaud, Drea de Matteo, Justin Theroux, Peter Bogdanovich, and Gena Rowlands.
Zoe Rowlands Cassavetes is an American film director, screenwriter, and actress. She is the daughter of filmmaker John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands. She is best known for her 2007 film Broken English.
Machine Gun McCain is a 1969 English-language Italian crime film directed by Giuliano Montaldo and starring John Cassavetes, Britt Ekland, Peter Falk, Gabriele Ferzetti, and Florinda Bolkan. Cassavetes' spouse and regular collaborator Gena Rowlands appears in a supporting role. The film is based on the Ovid Demaris novel Candyleg, adapted by Montaldo, Mino Roli, and American playwright Israel Horovitz. It premiered at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or.
John Cassavetes began his career in film in 1953 and ended it in 1986, between which times he was involved in every aspect of the film, television, and stage arts, including acting, directing, scoring, shooting, editing, producing, and marketing.
Lady Rowlands was an American film actress. Most of her work came in the films of John Cassavetes, who was married to her daughter, the Academy Award-nominated and four-time Emmy Award-winning actress Gena Rowlands.
Vittoria Febbi is an Italian actress and voice actress.
References
↑ "All-time Film Rental Champs", Variety, January 7, 1976 p 46
A Woman Under the Influence essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN0826429777, pages 709–710.
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