{"id":631035,"date":"2024-08-16T02:39:26","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T23:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/critics-appreciation-gena-rowlands-a-woman-of-influence\/"},"modified":"2024-08-16T02:39:26","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T23:39:26","slug":"critics-appreciation-gena-rowlands-a-woman-of-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/critics-appreciation-gena-rowlands-a-woman-of-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"#Critic\u2019s Appreciation: Gena Rowlands, a Woman of Influence\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n In the history of American movies<\/a>, and, arguably, of movies in general<\/a>, there has never been a partnership between a husband and wife as consequential as that of director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands. <\/p>\n

\n Not only did the two make several masterpieces together, among them Faces<\/em>, A Woman Under the Influence<\/em> and Opening Night<\/em>. They managed to create a whole body of deeply personal features \u2014 shot completely outside of the studio system and often inside their own family home in the Hollywood Hills \u2014 that would usher in the era of what we now call \u201cindependent film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Surely, there had been some memorable director-actress duos before them, mostly in Europe: Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti. But in those cases, which definitely yielded their share of masterpieces as well, the director was the auteur<\/em> and the actress his muse. But she wasn\u2019t, per se<\/em>, a collaborator.<\/p>\n

\n Rowlands\u2019 role in the films of her husband was something totally new \u2014 something that, when we reflect on it decades later, and upon the actress\u2019 death on Wednesday at the age of 94, seems downright revolutionary now. A collaborator in front of and behind the camera, Rowlands was both muse and motor for Cassavetes. She was the veritable raison d\u2019\u00eatre<\/em> for many of his greatest movies, which were written and directed for her to star in, and which were often inspired by the life the two shared during their 35 years of marriage.<\/p>\n

\n Where that life ended and the art began was never fully clear. One constantly shaped the other, to the extent that their films \u2014 with the exception of the fun and femme-centric mob thriller, Gloria <\/em>\u2014 often feel less like movies than home movies. In all of them, Rowlands played characters in the throes of loving if tumultuous relationships, characters who had a hard time separating the personal from the professional, who tried to be good spouses and mothers while also trying to be free and honest women. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Just like her husband, whom Rowland met when the two were still students at New York\u2019s American Academy of Dramatic Arts in the early 50s, the actress got her start in repertory theatre and the exploding medium of television, featuring in episodes of Top Secret<\/em> and Goodyear Television Playhouse<\/em>. Blonde, beautiful and from a prominent Midwestern family \u2014 her father, Edwin Rowlands, was a state senator who later worked in D.C. for the Department of Agriculture \u2014 she could have followed in the footsteps of Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Doris Day or any number of actresses whose careers coincided with the last major decade of Hollywood\u2019s classic studio system.<\/p>\n

\n Indeed, with lead roles opposite Kirk Douglas in Lonely Are the Brave<\/em> and Rock Hudson in The Spiral Road<\/em>, both of which were released in 1962, Rowlands seemed to be on that path. But she wound up taking a different one, accompanying Cassavetes, who was already a successful TV and movie star by then, in his efforts to become a filmmaker while also raising their first child (future director Nick Cassavetes), born in 1959.<\/p>\n

\n After an uncredited role in Shadows<\/em>, Rowlands\u2019 official screen debut for her husband was in his third feature, A Child Is Waiting<\/em>, where she starred alongside Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster. It was a conventional effort that Cassavetes altogether disowned upon its release in 1963. But five years later, in their breakthrough, Faces<\/em>, both director and actress came into their own.<\/p>\n

\n Less a regular movie than a series of scenes that are so honest and ripe with conflict, they play like high drama torn from the fabric of everyday life, Faces<\/em> is where Cassavetes homed in on a method he would repeat throughout his other films: writing scenes and characters stolen from his own experiences; working vigorously with an ensemble cast (often including non-professionals) to create each individual role; shooting nonstop to capture every detail of a performance; and using his house as the main set, because there was no other way to get the movie done on such a tiny budget.<\/p>\n

\n Rowlands was the other major part of the formula, and the first time we see her in Faces<\/em>, just after the main title card, she app<\/a>ears in chiaroscuro black-and-white like a golden age MGM starlet \u2014 or like the subject of one of Andy Warhol\u2019s screen tests \u2014 while a man makes a kissing sound off-camera. There couldn\u2019t be a more sublime homage from director to actress, or husband to wife, than that single shot, and it would kickstart a collaboration that would span six more features over the next 15 years.<\/p>\n

\n But Rowlands is more than just a pretty face in Faces<\/em>. She plays a high-priced L.A. call girl unafraid to speak her mind, to show her strengths and weaknesses, her playfulness and ferocity, as she remains subjected to the whims of men who pay for her services. Rarely in any American film, and certainly any American film before that time, was a prostitute portrayed with such character and vivacity, such truthfulness.<\/p>\n

\n Beyond semi-regular work on TV, including a recurring role on Peyton Place<\/em>, Rowlands\u2019 screen roles up until her husband\u2019s death in 1989 were almost exclusively limited to his movies. And those movies were almost entirely built around her, whether she was playing one half of a screwball comedy couple in Minnie and Moskowitz<\/em>; a Broadway actress haunted by the ghost of a dead girl in Opening Night<\/em>; or the sister of an alcoholic writer spinning deliriously out of control at the end of his life in the most autobiographical feature of them all: Cassavetes\u2019 final movie, Love Streams<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n And then of course, there\u2019s A Woman Under the Influence<\/em>, which, of all the films the two made together, is the one Rowlands is most remembered for, and deservedly so. (It was also the film for which she received her first of two Oscar nominations \u2014 although she didn\u2019t win either and was eventually handed an honorary Oscar in 2015.) \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Rowlands\u2019 performance in Influence<\/em> is arguably the greatest achievement by an actress in an American movie since the 1950s, and it has yet to be equaled. Although neither she nor Cassavetes were members of the Actors\u2019 Studio \u2014 Cassavetes was openly critical of Lee Strasberg and the Method in interviews \u2014 Rowlands\u2019 turn is on par with the searing, soul-searching work of Marlon Brando and James Dean at their best.<\/p>\n

\n In fact, the part of Mabel, housewife to ornery construction worker Nick (played by Peter Falk) and mother to three rather unruly kids, was originally written by Cassavetes for the theater. But Rowlands told her husband that playing such a role each night on stage would either kill her or send her to the sanatorium, so the director wound up turning the play into a feature-length film.<\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s easy to see what Rowlands feared. From the first time we see Mabel, she already seems to be losing it, waiting anxiously \u2014 very <\/em>anxiously \u2014 for Nick to come home so they can spend a rare night together without the children, who are at her mom\u2019s (played by the actress\u2019 own mother, who went by the screen name of Lady Rowlands). When Nick never shows up, Mabel begins to unravel, and she never stops for the next two and a half hours, oscillating from doting wife and mother to a woman who looks like a deer caught in the headlights, wondering what the hell she\u2019s doing there at all.<\/p>\n

\n Part of the reason is that Mabel drinks too much. Another reason is that Nick is abusive, raising his voice and hitting her when he\u2019s too jealous or otherwise upset by her antics. Another is that Mabel may have bipolar disorder, switching between knee-slapping manic mode and catatonic depression, although such mental illnesses weren\u2019t well-diagnosed back then. The question asked by A Woman Under the Influence<\/em> is whether a family can survive all of that purely out of the love they have to give to each other.<\/p>\n

\n Rowlands\u2019 performance feels so layered and complete because you can never pin her character down, never totally define her. Mabel is many things at once, as we all are. And she\u2019s so transparently honest, when dealing with her husband or children or mom or herself, that it breaks your heart. She wants to be a good mother and wife, but it\u2019s hard to do that sometimes, especially when the role can feel so demeaning. <\/p>\n

\n In any case, Mabel never acts hurtful or cruel, which is characteristic of nearly all the parts Rowlands played for her husband and other directors \u2014 whether it was for Woody Allen in the underrated drama Another Woman<\/em> or for her son Nick Cassavetes in the box office hit The Notebook<\/em>, probably the actress\u2019 last memorable role.<\/p>\n

\n What touches us so much about Rowlands, both on the screen and perhaps off of it, is that she always looked like she was trying<\/em> to do her best but didn\u2019t necessarily succeed. This is what makes her characters feel so vulnerable and real: the way they often wind up failing.<\/p>\n

\n Cassavetes also felt like a failure in his lifetime. For the most part, his films were financially unsuccessful and a nightmare to produce, and he never received the recognition, at least in America, that he felt he deserved. In the director\u2019s run of great movies, Rowlands played women who often channeled that fear and anguish, but also the sense of hope and exuberance that come with trying to make meaningful art. If some of her characters failed, like Mabel did, then at least they failed spectacularly.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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In the history of American movies, and, arguably, of movies in general, there has never been a partnership between a husband and wife as consequential as that of director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands. Not only did the two make several masterpieces together, among them Faces, A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":631036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/A-Woman-Under-the-Influence-Gena-Rowlands-everett-H-2024.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[151282,88139,76380],"class_list":["post-631035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-gena-rowlands","tag-nick-cassavetes","tag-the-notebook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}