Opening Night

Opening Night is my favorite Cassavetes, and I feel it is my duty to debunk the notion that those or any of his films aside from Shadows was strictly improvised. In fact, his films were tightly scripted after actor improvisation was used to contribute to his ideas. The coherence of a film like Opening Night, the development of the themes of aging, vanity, and hope, could not just spring from the improvisational head of even the very fine actors in the movie. If you pay attention to the dialogue (outside of the lines in the play), it is obvious that much care was taken to craft them (e.g., the scene where Myrtle explains to the playwright what problems she is having with the character and script).

It was once suggested by Pauline Kael, never a fan, that Cassavetes thought not like a director, but like an actor. What Kael meant was his supposed lack of sophistication as a filmmaker; to take that comparison further, to me, it never feels like Cassavetes is directing himself in a film, it feels like Cassavetes implanting himself inside his own creation, like Orson Welles. Cassavetes is just as much of a genius as Welles, but far more important as a true artist (as opposed to a technician or rhetorician). This is like a cross between Italian passion (though Cassavetes was actually Greek) and Scandinavian introversion. Never before have inner demons been so exposed physically.

It's about the mystery of becoming, performing, and acting. Like a haunted Skip James record, it's got the echoes of ghosts all around. Rowlands' breakdowns, which are stupefying and almost operatic, surprising coming from Cassavetes, are accompanied by a jumpy, unsettling piano. Who is this dead girl? The metaphysical possibilities are endless, and it's amazing to find this kind of thing in a Cassavetes film, just the overt display of intelligence (there is also a brief bit of voice-over at the beginning). But then, he always was intelligent, he just never flapped it around for easy praise. This is not "Adaptation"; here, the blending of reality and fiction and drama is not to show cleverness but to show the inner turmoil and confusion it creates.

There's so much going on. The pure, joyous love when Rowlands greets her doorman; the horror when she beats herself up... The scene where the girl talks about how she devoted her life to art and to music is one of the most effective demonstrations of understanding what it means to be a fan of someone. You can see some roots of this in "A Star Is Born," and Almodovar borrowed from it for "All About My Mother." I think the ending is a little bit of a disappointment because of the laughing fits, but the preparation leading up to it is almost sickening. (You can shoot me, but I think the alcoholism, despite its urgency in many of the scenes, is a relatively small point about the film.)

It's a living, breathing thing, and it feels like a process: it could go any direction at any time. Like "Taste of Cherry," we are reminded that "you must never forget this is only a play." Yet it is dangerous: when Rowlands says that line, is it great drama? How will the audience take it? Is she being reflexive or does she just not care? Her (character's) breakdowns are incorporated into the performances, and ultimately the film, in such a way that it's like witnessing a female James Dean. 10/10

This is the film that nearly broke Cassavetes for good. It played in a single LA theater for a few weeks to empty seats before being shelved, never really opening. People would not have flocked to see it but it must have been dismay that shakes you to your core, to go through all this work and just shelve it at the end. In a few years time it would be playing in MoMA.

Cassavetes' whole project of making films is one of the most fascinating in the medium. We have only tidbits on screen really. The rest is tucked away in the filming process that went into discovering each film. It's in the hours of footage he never used. The four hour versions of Husbands and Woman we'll never see. His struggles to make each one are comparable to Welles, remarkable men both.

The story goes that he was so spent after making Woman that he was never the same again. He had said his piece and in the most pure way possible. Before and after are iterations of the same way of seeing anyway, as is always with makers who have something to impart and don't just show up for work. But he was fervent to keep going: he used the profits from that film to make Chinese Bookie and this out of pocket.

Bookie saw him reflecting on his own place as proprietor of lively improvisations while having to deliver a gangster plot to appease money men. It was not just cynical work. It was a meditative search for a true face from among different masks; suave playboy, entertainer, killer. It continues here, the same business with roles and faces.

As always, actors fumble and fret within the constraints of a story imposed on them. The camera swims as one of them would, as if culled from inside an actor uncertain about his presence, losing and finding again. The whole has that thick, viscous quality I love about him, it demands concentrated staying in that space where nothing is yet decided. This is Cassavetes' room. By this point you'll know whether you like it or not.

This is about an actress asked to go into that room and portray a role: woman pushing forty, childless and unmarried. It's for a play they're preparing for New York out in the sticks. She is all of those things in "real life" so what would make better sense than to portray truthfully?

But this is the whole thing with Cassavetes, why you deserve to have him in your life above all those other filmmakers who mollycoddle you with redemptions. With him truth is something you set out to find by shedding self, it's not handed down by any role and you have to make sure of that. It's what you find after you have stopped tossing the room for it. After words and guises have been peeled back, what is there?

This whole film is about an actress, Rowlands, fighting to shed that self that stands in the way of true expression. The play role expects middle-aged desperation about life, self- pity. Melodrama stuff. But she can't do it, won't. She could tap into those parts of herself but that would be giving into those parts, nurturing them, conceding to be the person the story says you must be.

So she won't do it. People plead with her, cajole, scold or lecture her but nothing does it, she is adamant. It has a few blunt devices along the way: seance and ghost of a younger self. Her refusal to do the sensible thing aggravates. In the all important premiere she finally arrives late and drunk and everyone concedes that it's not going to happen.

All of this ribs on Cassavetes own method of sustained, structured collapse where the point isn't to use actors to convey certainties of drama, it's to use drama to chisel the persons who will live through its effect on them. Whatever that comes to be. It all has to arrive to a point of intense uncertainty. A cessation of thought so that things will be free to mean themselves.

You'll see what he does in the end. It's Cassavetes and Rowlands on a stage in a culmination of a parallel life in which they never married.

It's marvelous. It doesn't really work and you will probably note that he misses. But if you're someone who tries to be the person you truly feel in your heart to be, you will rejoice to see the baring and nothing pretty, sad or redemptive salvaged out of it so we'll applaud. It's the reach that drives it, the transcendent reach for that idea all about masks dropping and having to face yourself bare, and in his reach he is as vast as Tarkovsky.

From what I gather on the making of OPENING NIGHT, the plays that are performed in the film are real. The audiences are supposedly real, and the flubbed lines are also real occurrences. Of course, since there is much improvising, it is sometimes hard to see where the energy originated from. But with OPENING NIGHT, Cassavetes brings us into the world of theater, and some of his comments are harrowing.

Rowlands stars as Myrtle Gordon, a serious stage actress with a large following. She has fans that follow her before and after her performances, beg for her autograph, and generally leave Myrte cold. Gazzara is Myrtle's director, a manipulator who knows how to handle his actors. Cassavetes plays Myrtle's costar, a relationship that leads to fights with Myrtle, on and off-stage.

Meanwhile, Myrtle is starting to lose her grip. She is having difficulty grasping the character she is playing in her latest performance. She has trouble remembering her lines, and staying in character. Her personal life begins to take over.

This is due to her witnessing a death of one of her fans. She brushes off this Anne Baxter( in ALL ABOUT EVE) wannabe, and moments later learns that this fan was killed in a car accident. This brings out guilty feelings in Myrtle, that her life and the lives of others are empty. And that she may be the cause of some of these problems.

Myrtle is a lonely character. She lives for acting, and when she loses her focus, it eats away at her confidence. Myrtle feels unable to express what she already knows. She forgets how to be herself.

OPENING NIGHT is a very powerful film. It demands that we, as the audience, become involved emotionally with the characters. Cassavetes is a loose director who knows how to evoke feelings through character improvisation and crude camera techniques. His films are always professional, but there is a certain gritty quality as well that lends atmosphere and a sense of geography to his work. Cassavetes was a true film artist, and his actors are artists as well.

Rowlands is fearless; she is one actress who rips into herself to release the characters that she play. This often leaves her naked, and that can be fascinating and entertaining. Gazzara is wonderfully pompous as the director, and he plays with a perfect combination of relaxed confidence and creeping self-doubt. And Cassavetes is no slouch as an actor; his work in other directors' films show that he was versatile and inspired without necessarily having to steer.

My only complaints here are that the film has a few too many ideas. This is a minor complaint for such an engrossing film, but the movie becomes top-heavy from all of the threads that the audience is trying to follow. While Cassavetes' HUSBANDS and WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE ran on a straight time-line, OPENING NIGHT is much more loosely structured. This can lead to mix-ups, but as I say, this is only a minor gripe.

OPENING NIGHT is definitely not the film to start with if you are just getting into the Cassavetes film catalogue. It may seem pointless at times, and the running time is a tad long. But, mark my words, there are many points made in OPENING NIGHT, and if the viewer is more familiar with Cassavete's aspirations, the film can be quite a good viewing. For fans of different acting techniques and independent film, I highly recommend this film. I own a copy, and I'll probably never give it up.

"Opening Night" released in 1977, tries to be an ambitious production. It succeeds only in the truly stunning performance of Gena Rowlands. Her character of theatre actress Myrtle is not necessarily someone we would love in real life. She is self-absorbed, often obnoxious, and makes life miserable for those around her - in other words, not unlike some actresses! Myrtle is also a woman on the edge of collapse - we are not quite sure if the demons she is fighting are real or imagined, although we are let in on the secret early. Rowlands is obviously well directed with love by her gifted husband, actor/director John Cassavettes, who has a role in the film as well. This film is not without flaws - it is overly long, and the last part of the film where Myrtle goes on stage while very drunk seems almost cruel. The "improvising" in some of the dialogue - at least while on stage - goes on way too long. Some of the supporting characters give good performances, especially from Ben Gazarra, playing Myrtle's sleazy producer. Joan Blondell's character is never fully developed, and I never could figure out why she was in the film, except to placate Myrtle. See this film for Rowlands alone - she is fascinating throughout - and it is tough to take your eyes off her, although you will want to at times.