November 23, 2008: A Woman Under the Influence
I’ve been working my way through a borrowed John Cassavetes DVD box set for a distressingly long time now, and will probably give up before I get to the end. There are just so many movies to watch, it makes an intense focus on one director seem too indulgent. These are good movies, but they require a particular mood.
John Cassavetes was an American actor/director who made his living playing macho men on TV and in big Hollywood productions (The Dirty Dozen), which gave him the flexibility to write and direct his own films with small budgets and a stable of actors he regularly used. These films cut right to the heart of human nature and human relationships. I have only seen a handful of them, and while sometimes difficult to watch, they are most definitely rewarding.
A Woman Under the Influence stars Peter Falk (TV’s Columbo, though perhaps better known to the current generation as the visiting grandfather reading aloud in The Princess Bride) and Gena Rowlands (Cassavetes’ wife and frequent muse) as a husband and wife who are coming apart at the seams. That’s not to say that they are splitting up, but rather that each of them is falling apart individually, and they can’t figure out how to help each other the way they need to be helped. Falk is a gruff utilities worker who has a macho image to uphold and doesn’t know how to react reasonably when his wife starts to act a bit loopy. Rowlands is a loving wife and mother who is beginning to act out in strange ways as an uprising against the rigid way in which society expects her to live, a way of life which is enforced by her husband.
Eventually, she is committed to an asylum for a brief period, even though she is arguably the only sane one of the lot, and once she is out, nobody quite knows how to handle her.
Cassavetes’ films tend to have very low production values, with uneven lighting and handheld camera work, but these techniques permit real intimacy with the actors and let them inhabit the characters and the places. I wasn’t thinking about Columbo (Peter Falk’s iconic TV role) as I watched this. I was thinking about how a husband and wife can know each other so well but be unable to show each other the tenderness they deserve. The world sure doesn’t make it easy to live your life the way you want to.
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