Woman Under The Influence, A

The last of Cassavetes’ emotionally torrid cinema verité chamber pieces, originally written as a play that was never produced because his wife, Gena Rowlands pointed out that it would be impossible to perform night after night, it tells the story of the troubled marriage of Nick (Peter Falk), a construction worker and his emotionally unstable wife, Mabel (Gena Rowlands).

The film belongs to Rowlands, although of course without the director’s dedication and that of his repertory company, to “being real”, the project of exposing the human heart in all its vulnerability would not have been achieved. This, of course, makes for a far less tidy, sometimes taxing, film than the mainstream would ever allow and there are uneven passages that most director’s would have left on the cutting room floor. A warts-and-all in form as much as performance is, however very much Cassavetes' aesthetic and and their interweaving is integral to the overall effect. The film also includes a memorably strong performance by Falk as the traditionally Italian husband and father completely out-of-tune with his wife and in truth the source of Mabel's problems despite loving her in his own way

Despite the characteristically gruelling grappling with emotional pain by his protagonists, Cassavetes ends the film on relatively upbeat ending making for an interesting comparison to the formally similar but less positive ending of Faces (1968), the first of this group of his films.

FYI: The original theatrical version had a running time of 155 mins.

 

Want something different?