The Film Journal...Passionate and Informed Film Criticism From an Auteurist Perspective

8/6/2019 The Film Journal...Passionate and Informed Film Criticism From an Auteurist Perspective.

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4/22/11 9:he Film Journal...Passionate and informed film criticism from an auteurist perspective.

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Retrospective:Retrospective: JohnJohn

CassavetesCassavetes

ByBy Tim ApplegateTim Applegate

Tim Applegate is a poet and freelancewriter in western Oregon. His poems

regularly appear in various nationalpublications. He is also a frequentcontributor to the online film journalsKameraand 24 Frames Per Second.

Over a span of three-and-a-half decades John Cassavetes appeared as an actor inalmost forty productions, creating in the process a compelling, if uneven, body ofwork. A screen natural with an engaging, unaffected style, Cassavetes crafted anumber of indelible performances, including the unpredictable Franco in The Dirty

Dozen(1967), the husband who sells his soul to the devil in Rosemary's Baby(1968), and the gangster Nicky in Elaine May's underrated Mikey and Nicky(1976). But in the annals of cinema it is his groundbreaking career as a maverickwriter/director, an iconoclast who fashioned a series of brutally honest,sometimes exasperating, fiercely original pictures, for which he will best beremembered. From 1968, when he released Faces, until his untimely death, at 60,in 1989, Cassavetes wrote and directed eight of the most unconventional moviesto ever grace American screens. (Before Faces, he directed two major studioproductions, Too Late Blues(1961) and A Child Is Waiting(1963), as well as theavant-garde Shadows(1959), a forerunner of the filmsexamined in this article.) Today, when independent filmmakers are lauded at

festivals worldwide, and even featured on their own television outlet (TheSundance Channel), these eight astonishing pictures still represent, perhaps nowmore than ever, one of the few essential canons in American film.

To audiences accustomed to traditional filmmaking, to formulaic stories told inconventional cinematic terms, Cassavetes' movies were (and remain) difficult tofathom. Intense character studies of middle-aged men and women in variousstages of spiritual and emotional disarray, his films break many of the acceptedrules of cinema: their pacing is erratic, their "plots" almost non-existent, their
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conclusions inconclusive. As noted Cassavetes' scholar Ray Carney points out, inlieu of traditional stories the characters became the plot, their behavior thenarrative. And yet by refusing to pander to the audience's expectations, and byallowing his actors (and himself) to discover their characters during the making ofthe movies, Cassavetes was able to map out a kind of emotional terrain rarelyseen onscreen. "I won't call my work entertainment," he once said. "It's exploring.It's asking questions of people, constantly. How much do you feel? How much doyou know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this? A good movie will ask

you questions you haven't been asked before, ones that you haven't thoughtabout every day of your life."

FacesFaces(1968)(1968)

Often credited as the first independent film to attract a mainstream Americanaudience, Facespresented a superb cast - John Marley as a disillusionedexecutive, Gena Rowlands as a prostitute, Lynn Carlin as Marley's wife, andSeymour Cassel as the object of Carlin's misplaced affections - in a relentless,unsparing depiction of marital strife. Like all of Cassavetes' pictures, Faceshingeson mood swings, long passages of desperate, drunken laughter giving way to

sudden moments of knee-buckling despair. Without warning, Marley informs Carlinthat he wants a divorce. Following a night of carnal pleasure, Cassel discovers thewoman he has just bedded lying unconscious on a bathroom floor.

Many of the familiar trademarks - the jittery camerawork, the cinema veritelighting, the extended (what some critics mistakenly considered misshapen)sequences - are already here. The supporting performances - Fred Draper asFreddie, Val Avery as McCarthy, Dorothy Gulliver as Florence, among others - areall first-rate. The dialogue is scathing, ironic, and precise.

The cast and crew worked, for the most part, without pay, and many of the

interiors were filmed in Cassavetes' own home. Disdainful of a hierarchical studiosystem that worshipped money andpower over art (a system which had recentlyblackballed him) he did not limit the cast and crew to a single duty. Betweentakes Cassel ran wires, or painted walls. The cameraman (George Sims) helpededit the footage. Various members of the crew appear as extras in the film.

Critical reception was, to put it mildly, mixed. Surprisingly, Facesgarnered threeAcademy Award nominations - for Cassel and Carlin's performances, as well asCassavetes' original script. Not surprisingly, the film has survived as a cult favoritelong after most of the movies of 1968 are all but forgotten, and is still consideredin many critical quarters the director's most accomplished work.

HusbandsHusbands(1970)(1970)

Boozy camaraderie among three New York City professionals (Cassavetes, BenGazzara, and Peter Falk), following the death of a mutual friend. After the funeralthe three husbands embark on a drinking binge, argue with their wives, fly toLondon, gamble at a casino, and manage to pick up women even more unstablethan they are. They confront mortality with bad jokes and expensive whiskey. Likethe male characters in Facesthey are loud, aggressive, funny, obnoxious, and


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charming.

Directing himself for the first time, Cassavetes delivers a fine, ingratiatingperformance. As Archie, Peter Falk is immensely likable. And Jenny Runacre,playing the deeply conflicted woman Cassavetes picks up in a London casino,makes an ideal match: like Cassavetes she is manic, quirky, and adrift. But in manyways the picture belongs to Gazzara. In the trickiest role in the film Gazzaraevokes both our dismay (in one disarming scene he slaps his wife, then her

mother) and our sympathy. When he sits on a hotel bed quietly weeping, wedon't know whether to laugh or to weep along with him.

After the claustrophobic camera placements of Faces, Husbandsloosens up. Evenan extended scene in a neighborhood bar feels airy, the camera casually panning achorus of drinkers who regale the three men with drunken renditions of oldfavorite songs. In London Falk stands in the middle of a rain-swept street pleadingwith the young woman he is trying, unsuccessfully, to seduce. And in the finalsequence Cassavetes kneels in his driveway to comfort his young daughter whilehis son appears, like a blur, at the edge of the frame, a brief moment thatresonates long after the film is over. Here is the father and husband, not the

drunken wag.

At a dinner party in Rome Cassavetes pitched Husbandsto a wealthy Italianbusinessman, who agreed on the spot to finance the picture. To gain thebusinessman's confidence, Cassavetes assured him that the script, which was notyet written, was completed, and that his two co-stars, who had only brieflydiscussed the possibility of even making the movie, were fully committed to thefilm.

"I believe that if an actor creates a character out of his emotions andexperiences, he should do with that character what he wants," Cassavetes said of

Husbands. "If Peter and Ben and I have three characters, why should a directorcome in and impose a fourth will? If the feelings are true and the relationship ispure, the story will come out of that. Most directors make a big mystery of theirwork, they tell you about your character and your responsibility to the overallthing. Bullshit. With people like Ben and Peter you don't give direction. You givefreedom and ideas."

MinnieMinnie and Moscowitzand Moscowitz(1971)(1971)

For those who consider Facesand Husbandstoo raw, too long, and toounflinching, here is the antidoteof sorts.

Seymour Cassel is Seymour Moscowitz, a New Jersey parking lot attendant whorelocates to Los Angeles searching, like many of Cassavetes' characters, forsomething he cannot quite define. Gena Rowlands is Minnie Moore, a museumcurator whose hunger for love has led her into a disastrous affair with a marriedman (Cassavetes), and a blind date with a bizarre middle-aged sociopath (ValAvery). When Avery, enraged by Minnie's rejection, confronts Rowlands in aparking lot, Cassel rushes to her rescue. Cassel then pursues Minnie for the rest ofthe picture, courting her with all the subtlety of a bulldog. He is noisy, crass,


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persistent and, finally, irresistible. When she isn't pummeling him with her fists,Minnie wearily accepts his advances. It's modern romance, as only Cassavetescould envision it.

There are lovely, fey moments: Cassel and Rowlands dancing in a parking lot, orserenading each other on a stairway; Cassel imitating Bugs Bunny; Rowlandsexplaining to her mother (Lady Rowlands) that Seymour enjoys being a parking lotattendant: "Mother, Seymour likes cars. He's very happy with cars."

Cassel is, as usual, splendid; like Rowlands, we're bowled over by his energy, hisexuberance for life. As the incurably romantic Minnie, Rowlands is luminous, herline readings fresh and provocative; she's an emotional chameleon, constantlychanging skins. And in a genuinely hilarious cameo, Cassavetes' real-life motherKatherine plays Moscowitz's overbearing Jewish mother. "This boy has noambition," she tells Minnie's mother. "He's not pretty. He eats sideways!"

One can easily imagine Cassavetes' detractors cringing when they viewed thisjoyful romp - what could they criticize now? His famous, almost interminably longtakes are here replaced with short scenes and rapid edits. Except for one

disturbing exchange between Cassavetes and Rowlands, when he informs her thathis wife has attempted suicide, the tone of the film is lighthearted, almostslapstick (in one sequence Cassel chases Rowlands down a sidewalk in his truck).And if that weren't enough to infuriate those critics who loved to disparage him,Cassavetes even thumbs his nose at the Hollywood movie kingdom those critics,consciously or not, represent. "You know I think that movies are a conspiracy,"Minnie tells her friend Florence (Elsie Ames). "They set you up from the timeyou're a little kid. They set you up to believe in ideals, in strength, and of course,in love. So you believe it."

Ironically, by the end of Minnie and Moscowitzwe believe it too.

A WomanA Woman Under the InfluenceUnder the Influence(1974)(1974)

In 1958, the year Broadway-trained actress Gena Rowlands appeared in her firstmotion picture (The High Cost Of Living), she married John Cassavetes, a creativeunion that would flourish until Cassavetes' death in 1989. Over that period, and inaddition to her sterling work in her husband's landmark projects, Rowlandsappeared in numerous productions for such disparate directors as William Friedkin(The Brinks Job), Woody Allen (Another Woman), and Jim Jarmusch (Night OnEarth). In 1997 she portrayed, flawlessly, the courageous, self-sufficient widow inUnhook The Stars, an underrated, under-attended picture directed by her sonNick.

As Mabel Longhetti in A Woman Under The Influence, Rowlands gives what manyconsider the finest performance of her career. Earthy one moment and etherealthe next, Rowlands has always been a mercurial actress: in her best portrayals weare never quite sure where she is taking us next. In Minnie and Moscovitz wecaught glimpses of that unpredictability, that spontaneity which, in A WomanUnder The Influence, becomes Mabel's dominant trait. It's a painful, affectionate,harrowing portrait of a woman teetering on the edge.


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Mabel Longhetti is an emotionally fragile wife and mother of three who, during thecourse of the movie, suffers a nervous breakdown. Peter Falk, in an impassioned,superior characterization, is Rowlands' husband Nick. A construction foreman forthe city of L.A., Nick works long, demanding hours, and in the first scene he isforced to cancel an evening with Rowlands when a water main breaks. Inresponse, Rowlands wanders into a nearby bar and picks up a stranger (O.G.Dunn). The next morning Falk returns home with the members of his constructioncrew, and in a bizarre morning ritual the men share a spaghetti breakfast withMabel. When Rowlands cradles one of the men (Billy Tidroe) in her arms, Falk loseshis patience and the mood of the sequence, the mood of the whole movie,abruptly changes. It's a brilliantly written scene, and its key revelations - Mabel'sfree spirit, Falk's sudden temper, Rowland's immense hunger for affection - echothroughout the rest of the film.

When Mabel's eccentric behavior becomes, in Falk's opinion, unacceptable, he hasher committed. Six months later she returns home. And then, as in so much ofCassavetes' work, the film ends where it began, somewhere in the middle. Onceagain we are provided no easy answers, no way out. This is life, Cassavetes tellsus, not the simplistic fairy tales we are so used to seeing onscreen.

For the first time Cassavetes uses a background score - by Bo Harwood - toheighten the movie's narrative tension. Caleb Deschanel's excellent, understatedcamerawork adds a touch of elegance to the proceedings: in one scene thecamera pans across a room, past a bowl of fruit at the center of a table, to thebed where Rowlands, in a cloud of morning light, now wakes. As always, thesecondary performances are uniformly stellar; like Robert Altman, Cassavetesoften employed the same actors (including numerous members of his andRowlands' families) in film after film, and you can sense the pleasure andcamaraderie these actors must have shared with their director. Also for the firsttime Cassavetes features, to great effect, children. Without belaboring the point,

he shows us the three children somehow surviving the maelstrom of their parents'wobbly marriage, and the reunion between Mabel and her kids, shot in a series ofintense close-ups, could not be less contrived, or more moving; it's a visionarymoment in a visionary film.

Like Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Mabel is "mad"because she is unable to play the role society has created for her. Again andagain A Womanquestions our long-held notions of emotional stability bydissecting the instability of the people who surround her. At the spaghettibreakfast one of the construction workers suddenly bursts into song. On themorning after their tryst, Dunn tells Mabel that he likes to pace around in the

morning and talk to himself. In a fit of rage and dismay Falk causes a co-worker totumble down the side of a hill. (Indeed, as the movie progresses, Falk's behaviorbecomes nearly as eccentric as Rowlands'.) Even the doctor who commits herseems slightly unhinged.

In one scene Rowlands, the consummate actress, turns to Falk, just as she musthave turned a hundred times to her husband, the director, and says "I don't knowwhat you want. How do you want me to be?"


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Yourself," Falk answers.

"You mean funny, or sad, or happy, or sly, or what? Which self?"

TheThe Kil ling of a Chinese BookieKill ing of a Chinese Bookie(1976)(1976)

"You could call it pretentious, indulgent, and full ofactorly trope. Why, then, can we simply not forget it?" -

Derek Malcolm, Century Of Films

Cassavetes once remarked that if one of his movies elicited too many positiveresponses at a test screening, he would re-shoot it. With The Killing Of A ChineseBookie, he needn't have worried. Densely atmospheric, murkily lit, and oftenobscure and confusing, The Killingis one of Cassavetes' least accessible films,and one of his finest. His first foray into the crime genre, The Killingcombinesstandard action sequences - a gunfight, a chase, a double-cross - with an incisivecharacter study of a proud man who, through recklessness, has placed everythinghe has ever worked for in jeopardy. At its dark center, The Killingis Cassavetes'unique meditation on what it takes to be a man in America, and it is not a

comforting sight.

If Mabel Longhetti was unable to play the role society had deemed proper for her,Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara), the central character in The Killing, is unable notto. The epitome of cool, of macho artifice, Gazzara hides his emotions behind afacade of self-control. The owner of what must be the strangest strip club everpresented on film (instead of merely disrobing, the strippers perform, to theaudience's dismay, clumsy cabaret acts), Cosmo Vitelli is a veteran of the KoreanWar, the lover of one of his strippers (Azizi Jahati), and a self-made man. He isalso $23,000 in debt to a local gambling syndicate. To relieve the debt, andpresumably save his life, Gazzara reluctantly agrees to murder a rival crime lord.

With each successive film Cassavetes' writing became more expansive, and in TheKillinghe explores such manly issues as money ("money, that's Jesus", one ofthe characters says), drinking, sex, gambling and guns. He also explores, as hedoes in all his work, the idea of authenticity. Gazzara, like his strippers, lives hislife on a stage - in one way or another they are always performing - and onceagain Cassavetes' screenplay mines that theme for all it's worth. "I'm onlyhappy," Cosmo tells the strippers, "when I can be what people want me to be,rather than be myself."

In minor but seminal roles, Seymour Cassel and cult favorite Timothy Carey playsmall-time hoods, and in their quiet manner they are as menacing as anyone

Scorsese or Coppola ever put onscreen. (Proving once again that he is moreinterested in the ineffable mysteries of human behavior than in formal cinematechnique, Cassavetes shoots an entire sequence between the gangsters andGazzara in near total darkness, only their ghostly voices rising through the murk.)As Cosmo's girlfriend Rachel, Johati projects a touching vulnerability. And in therole of a lifetime, Gazzara absolutely shines. A deeply intuitive actor, Gazzara hererelies on his instincts, and in so doing crafts what is perhaps the most memorablecharacter in the entire Cassavetes' oeuvre. His Cosmo is a model of restraint,


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modulation, and self-deceit: in the final scene he stands in front of his club,gingerly patting his side, where a bullet is lodged, as if through sheer will he couldmake the blood disappear. When, in the movie's most remarkable passage, hediscusses the mother who abandoned him, he holds the pain inside - he stays cool- which makes the revelation even more wrenching.

After the relative box-office success of A Woman Under The Influence, TheKillingwas, predictably, a financial disaster. Fortunately in Europe it fared much

better, particularly in France where Cassavetes was once again hailed as anauthentic innovator, an American Godard.

OpeningOpening NightNight(1977)(1977)

First shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 1977, and not released theatrically in theUnited States until 1991, Opening Nighttells the story of Myrtle Gordon (GenaRowlands) a famous stage actress who is rehearsing a play which details, inMyrtle's words, "the gradual lessening of my power as a woman as I mature." Theplay, written by a sixty-five year old playwright (Joan Blondell, in a role originallyconceived for Bette Davis), tackles the issue of aging head-on, a subject

Rowlands finds unworthy; "Age is depressing," she tells Blondell, "age is dull." Inthe days leading up to the play's opening night on Broadway, the cast and crew(including Cassavetes as an actor and Gazzara as the director) rehearse during theday and then perform the play in front of a small live audience at night. Meanwhilewe watch, with that queasy fascination these pictures often evoke in the viewer,Rowlands' attempts to come to grips with both her role in the production and herown inner demons (aging, alcoholism, and the death of a young fan). Like somany of Cassavetes' creations, Myrtle is dangling on the edge of an emotionalcliff.

Cassavetes never made a simple movie. To say, as some critics did at the time of

its release, that Opening Nightis "about" aging, is to miss the point, for thesepictures were never about any one thing. Like his own directing methods, his filmsare fluid; at their best, they seem to be occurring in real time. And if OpeningNightis "about" aging, it is also "about" actors, mortality, alcohol, insomnia, self-delusion and finally, in the end, a kind of hope. And it is also very much about themysterious process of making movies in the first place. During the rehearsalsthere are direct references to Minnie and Moscowitz, as well as A Woman UnderThe Influence. And in the final scene Falk, Cassel and Peter Bogdanovich appearbackstage, playing themselves. In Cassavetes' movies, real life and filmed lifeconstantly blur, which is why they are so often compared to home movies, orcinema verite. Unlike the previous films, the cinematography in Opening Night(byAl Ruban) is formal, almost stately; Ruban often places the camera in a longestablishing shot, and then leaves it there, letting the actors find their spacewithin the static frame. Since many of the scenes take place on a stage, thischoice makes perfect sense; like the audience in the movie, we always know weare watching a production or, in our case, a production within a production.

Cassavetes bristled at detractors who claimed he relied too much onimprovisation, and in Opening Nighthe addresses those critiques by showing, ashe once said, that "There's a difference between ad-libbing and improvising. And


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there's a difference between knowing what to do and just saying something. Ormaking choices as an actor." When Blondell tells Rowlands "All you have to do issay the lines with a degree of feeling," she is suggesting, of course, theantitheses of Cassavetes' technique. And when Rowlands arrives for opening nighthighly inebriated, Gazzara coaxes her onto the stage where she reinvents her role,and with that reinvention greatly enhances the power of the play. Roger Ebertonce suggested that the key to understanding these movies is to recognize thatCassavetes is always the Rowlands' character, and perhaps in this instance Ebert

is right. At the end of the picture Cassavetes stands on the stage, reveling withthe rest of the cast in the night's triumph, holding the handof the woman who has brought the audience to its feet.

For the live rehearsal scenes, Cassavetes placed an advertisement in a local paperfor people who would dress up and watch some actors perform scenes from aplay. He did not tell them when to laugh or applaud, because he wanted theirreactions to be genuine.

"He loved actors," Rowlands once said. "And he wanted the audience to enterinto the film with all of us, to have the feeling not just of observing but of being

there."

GloriaGloria(1980)(1980)

"Look, I'm not very bright. I wrote a very fast-moving,thoughtless piece about gangsters. And I don't evenknow any gangsters." - Cassavetes on Gloria.

Now here is a true oddity, a Cassavetes' film shunned by many of his staunchestadmirers for being, gasp, too conventional. A cat-and-mouse chase movie playedout on the streets of New York City, Gloriais the director's second foray into the

crime genre, but unlike his inimitable The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie, Gloriais afairly traditional gangster tale. And though there are memorable touches - thegritty locations, Bill Conti's excellent score, and Gena Rowlands' entertainingperformance - there is little to distinguish it from dozens of others of the sameilk.

Rowlands is Gloria, the former girlfriend of a Mob boss, who now lives alone in ashabby apartment building. When a neighbor (Buck Henry), an auditor for a crimesyndicate, turns over evidence to the FBI, his family is killed by hit men, but notbefore one of the children, a six-year old boy, escapes with Gloria. For the nexttwo hours Gloria and the boy flee the pursuing mobsters, holing up in cheapflophouses while trying, for reasons that are never made quite clear, to travel to

Pittsburgh.

The first problem with Gloriais that Cassavetes is not, and never claimed to be, aparticularly visual director. And although there is nothing inherently wrong withhis handling of the action scenes, clearly those sequences would have been betterserved by a more visceral helmsman, a Sam Peckinpah, or a Walter Hill. Secondlythere is the performance (or, to be more exact, the non-performance) of JuanAdames as the boy Rowlands rescues from the Mob; Adames seems


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uncomfortable in front of the camera, his line readings are clumsy, and despiteRowlands' yeoman efforts there is little chemistry between her and the boy. Andthen there is the issue of Cassavetes himself, who later admitted to aninterviewer that "I was bored because I knew the answer to the picture themoment we beganAll my best work comes from not knowing." Unfortunatelythat boredom shows through. It isn't a bad movie, just a lazy one.

It's impossible to watch Gloriawithout comparing it to The Killing Of A Chinese

Bookie. In The Killingthe mob figures - Seymour Cassel, Timothy Carey, MorganWoodward - have a quiet intensity: when they strong-arm Gazzara you can feelthe heat, the tension, the sweat. In Gloriathere is only one scene, near the end ofthe movie, that attains that kind of authenticity, and it is no surprise that thisparticular passage (featuring Rowlands and Basilio Franchina, as her formerboyfriend) is the best one in the film. But what ultimately sets The Killingapartfrom a hundred other similar stories, what gives it an air of greatness, is Gazzara'sabsolute realization of the troubled central character Cosmo Vitelli. Gloria, on theother hand, suffers by comparison because, for the first time in the Cassavetes'oeuvre, we know where Rowlands isgoing. It's a smart, consistent, funnycharacterization (Rowlands is simply too good an actress to give a bad

performance) but it lacks the spontaneity we've come to expect from her, aspontaneity that would reappear, and reappear with a vengeance, in Cassavetes'next project, the beautifully rendered Love Streams.

Gloriawas originally submitted as a screenplay to MGM, and Cassavetes onlyagreed to direct it as a favor to Rowlands, who had always wanted to play aswaggering, tough-talking broad. Then, a few weeks before shooting began,Cassavetes' father, whom John was very close to, passed away. Was Cassavetes,admittedly bored and perhaps despondent over his father's death, merely goingthrough the motions? Was he doing it for the money? If so, then it was time wellspent, for the money that was gained from the picture was used to finance his

next project, a stunning personal testament and a fitting capstone to his andRowlands' remarkable collaboration.

LoveLove StreamsStreams(1984)(1984)

"Love is a stream, it's continuous, it doesn't stop." -Gena Rowlands as Sarah Lawson in Love Streams

A fearless, poignant, uncompromising portrayal of the lives of an alcoholic writer(Cassavetes as Robert Harmon) and his emotionally-fragile sister (Rowlands),Love Streamsis not only Cassavetes' finest movie, not only one of a handful ofgenuine masterworks in independent American film, it is also a brilliant summation

of an artist's entire career. With its numerous references to his past efforts -echoes of the now-familiar themes - Love Streamsstands as the finalconfirmation of one man's vision of what personal cinema could achieve.

Like all of Cassavetes' work, Love Streamsevolves on so many levels it isimpossible to assimilate in a single viewing. Many of the director's thematicconcerns - madness, alcoholism, emotional disconnection, sex, and love - are onfull display, and while, true to form, he strenuously avoids sentimentalizing those


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concerns, the emotional impact of the material is undeniable. When Rowlandsarrives at her brother's house with a menagerie of pets, we may laugh, but ourlaughter is uneasy. When Harmon offers his eight-year old son a beer (because hedoesn't know how else to connect with him) we cringe at the implications. Andwhen Harmon is left bloodied and beaten by the husband of his estranged wife,we experience sympathy for his plight and, at the same time, bewilderment overthe behavior that has caused that plight. Once again Cassavetes blurs the moraldistinctions, muddies the emotional waters, and demands the viewer's open mind.

As Sarah Lawson, Rowlands is a composite of her previous characters - of MabelLonghetti and Minnie Moore, of Myrtle Gordon and Jeannie Rapp - and once againRowlands superbly displays the elusiveness, the unpredictability that makes hersuch a powerful screen force. Sarah's hallucinations - a fatal car accident, adisastrous pool party, and a Felliniesque ballet recital - are particularly effective;brief, haunting sequences that foreshadow the dreamlike ending of the film

Robert Harmon, too, is a compilation of previous roles. He is Cosmo Vitelli, in atux. He is Nick Longhetti, trying to physically drag Rowlands back from the brinkof insanity. He is John Cassavetes, who will die five years later of cirrhosis, with an

ever-present drink in his hand. And finally he is the consummate filmmaker who,in the final shot of his final film, waves goodbye to Rowlands, and waves goodbyeto us.

Love Streamsbegan as a play, by Ted Allan, starring Rowlands and Jon Voight.(In the movie, Voight was originally scheduled to play the Harmon character -rumored to be based, loosely, on Leonard Bernstein - but Cassavetes balked whenVoight said he also wanted to direct.) Then a few weeks before shooting began,Cassavetes was informed by his doctor that he had six months to live, a timeframe that proved to be wildly incorrect and yet one that must havelent the production a sense of urgency, particularly its stunning final scene when

Cassavetes, desperate for affection, tells Rowlands that she is the only person hehas ever truly loved.

FootnoteFootnote

In the mid-eighties Cassavetes was brought in by friends, including Falk, to finishdirecting Big Trouble, a hapless comedy he later disavowed. Following a longillness he died, in Los Angeles, on February 3, 1989.

ConclusionConclusion

To claim that the movies of John Cassavetes are some of the most influential in

modern American cinema is not to overstate the case. Directors from RobertAltman to Martin Scorsese, from John Sayles to Sean Penn, as well as scores oflesser-known independent artists, have acknowledged the debt. And yet there arethose in the critical community who still consider Cassavetes' pictures nothingmore than pretentious exercises in self-indulgence, and perhaps the best measureof their worth is that even now, thirty-five years after the release of Faces, theseworks still spark fierce debate.


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Watched in sequence, these eight pictures have a raw, cumulative power, theresonance of true art. If they seem strange, difficult, and demanding, they are soby design. And as long as cinema is regarded as a bona-fide art form, they willcontinue to be seen, continue to be rediscovered by successive generations ofdiscerning filmgoers. Like the characters they so ably portray, the movies of JohnCassavetes are crude, vibrant, aggressive, and essential, and they are not aboutto go away.

FILM JOURNAL 2002

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The Film Journal...Passionate and Informed Film Criticism From an Auteurist Perspective