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).

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.

Full of interesting ideas and really rather chilling at times, this account of a mental breakdown is fascinating to watch, with Gena Rowlands a glorious choice for the lead. It is in the way that Rowlands is able to carry emotion on her face that makes her performance so stunning, and along with some well used music and effective close-up photography, it is an intriguing piece of cinema, even if awkwardly very melodramatic at times and a tad hard to digest. The on and off-stage action in the protagonist's life is mixed together, and it is sort of muddled in this sense, though perhaps only as muddled as her mind is. The film poses such interesting questions about how much one should or does care, it portrays mental illness, and, it also has some insight into theatre production. It is very good stuff and only really brought down by being fatally overlong, with the content stretched to its limits.

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 is *such* a fun movie to watch. John Cassavetes was smack dab in the middle of his stride as a director, having completed A Woman Under The Influence (his watershed picture, a hugely intense, absolutely fantastic movie that manages to zone almost completely on nothing but individual human emotions - fear, love, self-doubt) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (an awesome awesome awesome movie with Ben Gazzara where he's working for and running from the mafia around Los Angeles, incredible, resonant, mostly handheld cinematography that places emphasis on human faces and a script that is full of realistic dialogue - probably because the film is heavily improvised) just before this. What it's all about is a middle-aged actress whose overriding insecurities as a human being are drawn to the surface by a single incident: the accidental death of an adoring, enigmatic fan. As she muddles her way through previews of her upcoming Broadway play 'Second Woman' (of which she is the star), her health -- mental and otherwise -- begins to deteriorate. She just can't get it together, and an unsympathetic (and when they feign sympathy and support, they're unbelievable) cast of supporters doesn't help matters. She drinks and drinks and drinks and falls down some and messes up a lot. Will she get it together in time for Opening Night?

Underneath this, John Cassavetes stages and films various scenes of the fictitious play in front of an actual audience, aware of the film cameras filming a movie or not. In that sense, these bits of the film are incredibly interesting. John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands share unmatched chemistry on stage, being that they were one of the most in-love couples in the annals of film history, and it shows. Cassavetes reminds me you of his dynamite ability as a nuanced, fun-to-watch character actor, and Gena Rowlands reminds you of why she's believable as an adored, successful stage actress. These are somewhat arcane stage performances, but are delightful.

What is wrong with Opening Night? It's a movie for people who love movies, with long takes, memorable camera moves, first rate acting, high-concept ideas, a solid beginning middle and end, a great score, and a central theme that is very compelling. Some of Cassavetes' best work, a real brawny film, tall and beautiful, heavily recommended to people who are sick of cotton candy movies, sick of feature-length trailers, sick of all the crap. If you want a thick, expansive thing, Opening Night sits on the shelf, waiting.