Gena Rowlands, star of A Woman Under The Influence (1974), Opening Night (1977) and Gloria (1980), and wife of John Cassavetes

While I’m catching up on my blog today, I thought I’d add an essay I wrote last semester on three films by one of my favourite directors, John Cassavetes, starring one of my favourite actors, Gena Rowlands. Written in the midst of production of my second short film for this year, it was a bit beyond me to fully structure these thoughts in the way I would have liked to, but I found this a very useful exercise in interrogating the work of one of avant-garde cinema’s true mavericks. Cassavetes is another filmmaker to keep in mind when gathering the courage to attempt what might be a beautiful failure or just an ugly disaster rather than something more achievable, and less extraordinary.

The films of John Cassavetes (1929 – 1989) eschew many of the stylistic, narrative and generic influences of cinematic tradition, which can be appreciated when pulling apart his vibrant and distinctive body of work as an independent filmmaker working outside the studio system. Cassavetes’ disruption of conventional approaches to genre, narrative and style can be found to varying degrees in three of his films chosen from the 12 in total he directed between 1956 and 1986: A Woman Under The Influence (1974), Opening Night (1977) and Gloria (1980). While the master narrative of Cassavetes’ films can be thought of as the revealing of the performative mask of identity that each of us wear in our daily lives, and the “style-less style” he pitted against the gloss of Hollywood can be observed in each of these films, Gloria represents Cassavetes’ decision at various points in his career to veer more towards accepted modes of style and narrative, even to the point of invoking, though once again disturbing, elements of genre.