A Woman Under The Influence (1974)

Today concerns John Cassavetes most famous film, A Woman Under The Influence. Cassavetes was a real American renagade independent filmmaker but he was didn't make low-fi films. He would actually in other people's work to pay for his own films. He rarely popped up in his own films and populated them with friends like Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara and family-usually his wife Gena Rowlands.
I don't know if i should have started with what's likely to be his greatest film but...
What's clear from the outset is that the man is a striking auteur. He likes intense visuals but not in the sense of vibrant colours, more whites and greys but in a mixture of exterior wide shots and interior extreme close-ups. Like I say, when you hear about Cassavetes, the great independent film icon, you imagine that it'll very hand-held and 'verite' but it's the most pleasant surprise to find most the film is beautifully photographed. (I later found out Phedon Papamichael and Caleb Deschanel, 2 of the most sought after DoP's working today, were involved in this film.)
The film its self concerns a wife and mother who has lost her thread on her sanity (Rowlands) and how she and her family including her husband (Peter Falk) deal with it.
I'm sure Rowlands was a prolific actress before John and I'm sure that they have a great relationship outside of work but her part in this film must be the best present, he's ever given her (outside of her children... who are in this film... playing her children!). It's a part any actress would give up her first born for; it's a complex, intense 64oz steak of a role and she's colossal in it. There were points that it seemed to me that her crazyness seemed a bit too broad but then she's always got this look like she's is lost in the abyss of her mind and I have to suppose that Mrs Rowlands didn't actually suffer from mental illness in 1974 and this must be intense acting.
Falk, as always, is brilliant as this man who is as desperately in love with his wife as he desperately wishes she could be and act normal.
The great hook about the story in this film is that most of the adults on the family especially Falk are completely ill-equipped emotionally to deal with this woman and spend half the film in denial about how serious her condition is.
My solitary beef with the film, as always, is that its too long to the point, it verges on repetition but, it's never boring. So I've learned Cassavetes, the actor - bad... Cassavetes, the director- Great!

I watched A Woman Under The Influence (1974) on DVD, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Jar City (2006)...