1980 Week: Gloria

          Indie-cinema godhead John Cassavetes initially earned fame as an actor in mainstream films, and he spent most of his life parachuting back into Hollywood for paycheck acting gigs even as his pursued his real passion, writing and directing esoteric films exploring dark corners of the human psyche. The two parts of Cassavetes’ cinematic identity converged in Gloria, the most commercially oriented movie that Cassavetes directed, with the exception of two studio pictures he made in the ’60s before finding his arthouse groove with Faces (1968) and Husbands (1970). Starring Cassavetes’ wife and muse, Gena Rowlands, Gloria is a straightforward crime picture with a touch of Hollywood sentimentality—exactly the sort of formulaic schmaltz that Cassavetes generally avoided. Even for an iconoclast, the possibility of reaching a bigger audience (and scoring a financial windfall) must have been impossible to resist. Nonetheless, it’s significant to observe that after Gloria, Cassavetes transitioned back to making art films until his death in 1989. Given its mediocrity, Gloria could not have been the most edifying of experiences.

          The movie opens in the Bronx, where a frantic Latina runs home to her apartment, realizing she’s being chased. Jeri (Julie Carmen) is married to Jack (Buck Henry), a mob accountant-turned-informant, so Jeri and Jack both realize hitmen are on the way to wipe out the couple and their two kids. When Jeri’s friend and neighbor, middle-aged former gang moll Gloria (Rowlands), stops by for a visit, Jeri explains the situation and asks Gloria to hide the kids until after the shooting stops. Gloria reluctantly agrees, but only preteen Phil (John Adames) leaves with her, since his sister elects to die with her parents. Gloria takes Phil to her apartment and listens in horror to gunfire down the hall, then sneaks Phil out of the building and becomes a fugitive—because Jack entrusted his young son with a book containing incriminating facts and figures. Before long, Gloria finds herself yanking her life’s savings from a safe-deposit box and escorting Phil around the country while she works connections with old mob buddies in order to revoke the hit on Phil. The predictable contrivance of the movie is that the more time she spends with Phil, the more she warms to the idea of being the boy’s surrogate mother.

          Because it sprawls across a fleshy 121 minutes and because costar Adames’ performance is quite terrible, Gloria doesn’t work as a zippy little thriller; instead, it’s a weird amalgam of pulp trash and thoughtful storytelling. Some fine things occur along the way, and Rowlands believably incarnates a seen-it-all broad surprised by the emergence of long-suppressed compassion. (Rowlands earned Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for her performance.) As for the movie around her, it’s perplexing. Cassavetes populates scenes with his customary mix of grotesques and oddballs, employing improvisational techniques and nonactors to increase the movie’s realism. Seeing as how the storyline is inherently contrived, the imposition of these indie-cinema tropes feels awkward and unnecessary. Moreover, there’s a disconnect between the meditative nature of the movie and the oppressive noise of Bill Conti’s score. The Rocky composer, never known for his subtlety, drenches action scenes with exciting themes and uses noodly jazz riffs to energize sleepier stretches.
          FYI, Sharon Stone stars in a lifeless 1999 remake, also titled Gloria. Inexplicably, Sidney Lumet directed.

Gloria: FUNKY

Opening Night (1977)

          Indie-cinema godhead John Cassavetes cranked out his singular movies at a steady pace throughout the ’70s, culminating with this epic rumination on the dissipation of a middle-aged woman’s psyche—not be confused with the director’s previous epic rumination on the dissipation of a middle-aged woman’s psyche, A Woman Under the Influence (1974). Yet while that film earned two Academy Award nominations and is now considered something of a zenith achievement for Cassavetes’ improvisational style, Opening Night is easily the filmmaker’s most interminable movie of the ’70s, running a bloated 144 minutes without ever once revealing to the audience what’s causing the central character’s emotional spiral. As with all of Cassavetes’ films, Opening Night has many champions (the picture earned two Golden Globe nominations), but it’s telling that the picture was such a huge flop during initial engagements that it didn’t receive a proper theatrical release until the ’80s. By the time Opening Night was completed, Cassavetes had already made five previous auteur pieces laden with shapeless angst, including two starring his real-life spouse Gena Rowlands, so the public appetite for the director’s uniquely self-indulgent art had clearly been exhausted.

          Rowlands plays an actress named Myrtle, who’s doing out-of-town previews for an upcoming Broadway show. Following a performance one night, Myrtle encounters a loving but troubled fan (Laura Johnson). Immediately thereafter, the fan dies in a traffic accident that Myrtle witnesses. This event spins Myrtle into a series of meltdowns, from alcoholic binges offstage to bizarre ad-libs onstage. Myrtle’s behavior worries the show’s costar (Cassavetes), playwright (Joan Blondell), and producer (Ben Gazzara), among others. The majority of Opening Night comprises dull, repetitive scenes of Rowlands acting strangely; sometimes she seems obnoxious, and sometimes she seems unhinged. Viewers are also subjected to excerpts from the trite play that Myrtle’s rehearsing. Whereas A Woman Under the Influence slid its title character’s dissipation into a narrative about a marriage under stress, Opening Night fails to surround Myrtle with formidable characters, so it’s as if everyone else in the movie exists only to watch Rowlands’ flamboyant acting. (Incidental scenes of Gazzara’s character with his wife, played by Zohra Lampert, don’t amount to much.) In the end, Opening Night seems more like a parody of Cassavetes’ more-is-more aesthetic than an actual example of the filmmaker’s craft.

Opening Night: LAME

A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

          I wish I could see the qualities in John Cassavetes’ work that are so obvious to his admirers, but having watched most of the major pictures in the writer-director’s revered canon, I’m hung up on a few things. First, why are the movies so self-indulgently long and repetitive? I get the idea of trying to capture reality in all of its messy rhythms, but since Cassavetes edited his raw footage, why didn’t he keep editing until scenes become concise? Did he really believe everything his actors did was interesting? Furthermore, isn’t there something inherently precious about the whole concept of “capturing reality” anyway, seeing as how Cassavetes’ movies feature actors? How true can pretending be? Finally, why are so many of Cassavetes’ pictures filled with wall-to-wall ugliness? The implication seems to be that the only genuine characters are those who are perpetually at each other’s throats for craven reasons.

          Anyway, I gave up trying to enjoy Cassavetes’ movies a while ago, even though I admire his integrity; there’s no question he showed nerve by shunning nearly everything one associates with Hollywood filmmaking, from brisk pacing to smooth camerawork to tidy resolutions. Consider: Around the time A Woman Under the Influence was made, actresses including Ellen Burstyn and Joanne Woodward were using their influence to make Hollywood movies featuring themes similar to those found in A Woman Under the Influence. Yet while the Hollywood productions starring Burstyn and Woodward offered crisp explanations for why certain women behave erratically, Cassavetes simply depicted a woman succumbing to unnamed mental difficulties, leaving the viewer as bewildered as the afflicted woman’s loved ones.

          Is one approach better than the other? Who’s to say?

          Cassavetes’ wife, Gena Rowlands, plays Mabel, a Los Angeles housewife and the mother of three young children. Her husband, Nick (Peter Falk), supervises a municipal road crew, so he’s often called away unexpectedly. When the story begins, one of Nick’s sudden absences knocks Mabel out of balance, so she cycles through several types of odd behavior. She forgets facts she should know well, like the names of Nick’s co-workers; she flirts recklessly and even brings a stranger home one night; she explodes into screaming rages; and she humiliates Nick by creating scenes in front of his family and friends. As in most of Cassavetes’ movies, these events are shown in long, shapeless scenes filled with seemingly improvised discursions the camera captures with blurry, documentary-style fluidity.

          Rowlands gives a committed performance, but whether her acting choices feel authentic or forced is open to debate. (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences praised her work with an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.) For me, however, Falk’s characterization is a greater stumbling block than Rowlands’. Watching him berate and lie to his wife, hearing him threaten to kill his own children and those of his neighbor, and seeing him slap Rowlands to the ground on two occasions, I kept wondering why everyone in the movie regarded Rowlands’ character as a lunatic. But then again, maybe that’s why I can’t find a place for myself in Cassavetes’ cinematic world. Between the rampant misogyny and the tiresome preoccupation with unmotivated anger, the director’s vision seems to be focused myopically on the worst parts of the human experience. 

A Woman Under the Influence: FUNKY

Two-Minute Warning (1976)

          The premise of Two-Minute Warning couldn’t be more appealing for fans of cheesy ’70s blockbusters: A sniper takes a position in the clock tower of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during a crowded football game, so cops led by Captain Peter Holly (Charlton Heston) must take the sniper out. Chuck Heston versus a psycho against a backdrop of tragic melodrama—pass the popcorn! Unfortunately, the title of Two-Minute Warning is itself a warning (to viewers), since virtually nothing exciting happens until the last two minutes of the game that provides the film’s narrative structure. Most of the movie comprises a long slog of “character development” in the superficial disaster-movie style, meaning Two-Minute Warning is nearly all foreplay with very little payoff.

          That said, if you dive into the movie aware that it’s a slow burn, the combination of enterprising location photography and enthusiastic performances might be enough to keep you interested. The main relationship in the movie is between Captain Holly, who spends most of his time watching the sniper through a video feed originating in the Goodyear Blimp (!), and hotshot SWAT team commander Chris Button (John Cassavetes). Holly wants to remove the sniper without gunplay, whereas Button is itching for a shootout. Watching these alpha males clash provides a smidgen of macho entertainment, though one wishes the filmmakers had found a way to make their conflict more dynamic. The lack of strong leading characters lets supporting players run away with the picture. Brock Peters stands out as a Coliseum maintenance man who tries to be a hero, and Beau Bridges has some sorta-affecting moments as an unemployed dad fighting with his wife and kids in the stands, unaware of the danger lurking behind the end zone.

          Two-Minute Warning hews so closely to the disaster-movie paradigm that the story also includes an aging pickpocket (Walter Pidgeon), a football-loving priest (Mitchell Ryan), and a bickering couple (played by David Janssen and Gena Rowlands). Yes, it’s the old “Who’s going to live, who’s going to die?” drill. Director Larry Peerce rounded out the cast with his then-wife, Marilyn Hassett, the star of his maudlin The Other Side of the Mountain movies, although casting his missus appears to be as close as he got to emotionally investing in this trifling potboiler. Since the Coliseum figured prominently in ’70s pop culture (it was used for Heaven Can Wait, North Dallas Forty, and innumerable TV episodes), the venue provides as comforting a presence as any of the name-brand actors, and Peerce shoots the location well. Overall, however, Two-Minute Warning is a missed opportunity given all the possibilities suggested by the premise. Fumble!

Two-Minute Warning: FUNKY

Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)

          “There’s some kinda crazy going on that’s not right,” Minnie Moore exclaims during a harrowing argument with her would-be paramour, Seymour Moskowitz—and that pretty much sums up the problems with this shambling character piece written and directed by indie-cinema icon John Cassavetes. The original anti-Hollywood auteur, Cassavetes practiced a unique style of filmmaking in which actors built improvisations around his scene ideas, resulting in pictures short on story but long on unique behavior. In Minnie and Moskowitz, however, the behavior veers way too far in the direction of absurd hysterics and repetitive melodrama. So instead of seeming incisive and intimate, the picture feels shapeless and shrill.

          The basic story of lonely, middle-aged museum curator Minnie (Gena Rowlands) stumbling into love with eccentric parking-lot attendant Seymour (Seymour Cassel) is innocuous enough, but the characters spend so much time enmeshed in shrieking arguments that it’s as if they live in some parallel Method-acting universe where every emotion is expressed via primal-scream therapy or simply repeating the same words over and over again. (This excess gets even more tiresome during lengthy cameos by familiar character players Val Avery, Timothy Carey, and Cassavetes himself, all of whom play frightening grotesques.)

          The title characters are in nearly every scene, either alone or together, so the picture belongs to Cassavetes regular Cassel and the director’s real-life wife, Rowlands. Cassel’s performance is undisciplined and wild, a string of colorful but unbelievable behaviors assembled into a hodgepodge that feels less like a character than an overeager audition reel. Rowlands offers her usual grounded work, but the storyline saddles her with irritating behaviors like drinking to excess and talking about her feelings in such introspective detail that her stupid life choices feel incongruous with her personal insights.

          The idea that these characters are compatible with each other is the movie’s biggest and least convincing contrivance, more or less rendering the whole enterprise moot, and the film is so monotonously screechy that it’s a relief when the director’s mother, Katherine Cassavetes, shows up for a funny but stereotypical featured role toward the end of the picture as Seymour’s overbearing Jewish mother.

Minnie and Moskowitz: LAME