When filmmaker John Cassavetes was struggling to find a distributor for A Woman Under the Influence, he suggested one night that he and his wife, actress Gena Rowlands, make a trip to an all-night newsstand. The director explained that they would get “all the papers from all the cities,” check out the local theatres, and call to ask if they might show his intense drama.
Rowlands, who starred in the film as Mabel Longhetti, an unstable housewife committed to an institution for treatment, recalls her husband’s resolve, and her own bewilderment.
“I said, ‘What makes you think that they’ll take your call?’” she says. “And he said, ‘Well they’ll at least answer anyway, even if it’s just that they can go home and tell their wives that they told John Cassavetes to go take a jump.’ ”
The cold calls did the trick. The couple found a few distributors, eventually sending the project to the New York Film Festival. The film would later earn both Cassavetes and Rowlands Oscar nominations: him for directing, and her for her masterful turn as Mabel.
Rowlands, now 81 years old, is coming to Toronto this week to present two of Cassavetes’ films playing as part of Masks and Faces: The Films of John Cassavetes, a complete retrospective of the director’s works running from July 14 to 31 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Rowlands and Cassavetes met as students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, later finding fame as actors in theatre and film. Cassavetes’ directorial debut came in 1959 with Shadows, and though production was routinely interrupted due to lack of funds, the film earned the budding auteur the Pasinetti critics’ prize at the 1960 Venice Film Festival.
While Cassavetes famously starred in such films as Rosemary’s Baby and The Dirty Dozen (both of which will play at the Lightbox), he soon grew to resent the commercial products coming out of Hollywood, focusing instead on an independent style of filmmaking free from studio constraints.
The director would go on to make 12 films prior to his death in 1989, garnering a reputation as a pioneer of cinéma vérité who didn’t shy away from tackling such issues as domestic turmoil and sexual politics. Cassavetes often shot with a hand-held camera, using only available lighting and occasionally calling upon actors to improvise their lines, as they did in Shadows.
Rowlands remembers everything: the hard times when the duo couldn’t afford to finish a film, the rehearsals they held around a massive table in their garage and, most fondly, how actors loved working with her husband, who became widely known as an “actor’s director” because he allowed them to break free from dramatic conventions.
“Any actor that worked with John was lucky because John loved actors,” she says. “He adored them; they could do no wrong. And that’s a very nice feeling.”
Rowlands herself starred in 10 of Cassavetes’ films, each one more memorable than the last. “Well, I loved A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night,” she says. “And, actually, I like all of John’s films so it’s hard for me to say.”
But the matter of financing her husband’s work was a different matter. The critically acclaimed A Woman Under The Influence was half-financed by Peter Falk and his wife, the former who starred alongside Rowlands in the film. Most other films were bankrolled by Rowlands and Cassavetes themselves, who would take acting jobs when they ran out of money for their projects.
“Nobody gave us any money to back, but that’s only possible if you are either very rich, and we certainly weren’t, but we both had established careers acting before we started making films,” Rowlands says. “So when we ran out of money — which we did frequently — we would work for somebody else and earn some money and put it in our film.”
When asked if filmmakers today could accomplish what she and Cassavetes did themselves — the director formed his own distribution company in 1968 to handle all their films — Rowlands admits it could be challenging.
“It wouldn’t be exactly the same. We did have the advantage in that we paid for our own production,” she says.
But the actress adds that today’s artists benefit from better technology that is relatively affordable. “I think all the new cameras and new electronics offer a tremendous opening for people making individual films. You don’t have to buy big expensive cameras … they’re just available at your fingertips and that surely will produce a lot of original work.”
Rowlands knows first-hand how Cassavetes’ films were simultaneously revered and reviled by audiences and the industry. Yet it’s this uncanny ability to provoke and polarize that she believes will resonate among audiences at the new retrospective.
“They were controversial in the beginning and I’m sure they’re controversial now, but it’s what we liked,” she says. “We like people to see them and have strong feelings about them, one way or the other.”
Gena Rowlands appears at the Bell Lightbox July 14 for a screening of A Women Under the Influence, and will introduce Faces July 15. For more information, visit tiff.net.
Commonly referred to as the “father of American independent cinema,” John Cassavetes has left a wealth of landmark films since his death in 1989, both as a director and an actor. A selection of highlights from Masks and Faces: The Films of John Cassavetes at the TIFF Bell Lightbox:
A Child Is Waiting (1963): Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster headline Cassavetes’ emotionally raw film centering on a home for mentally handicapped children.
The Dirty Dozen (1967): Cassavetes co-stars in Robert Aldrich’s bold and bloody Second World War film.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968): One of the greatest horror films of all time stars Cassavetes as a struggling New York actor who gets mixed up with a Satanic cult.
Husbands (1970): Cassavetes’ portrait of modern masculinity is both poignant and profane.
Gloria (1980): Gena Rowlands stars as a gangster’s moll on the run from the mob, with a young boy in tow. Infamously remade in 1999 with Sharon Stone in the lead.
For showtimes and tickets, visit tiff.net.
Source: National Post
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