User reviews

I caught this on TV once and was blown away by its energy and spontaneity. Gena Rowlands is as good in it as everyone says, with some real surprises. The point about the kid coming out with "grown up" mock-heroic phrases at some points is that he's picked all that stuff up from the movies and listening to his parents' gangster friends. It's supposed to be funny - he keeps shouting "I'm the Man" when he patently isn't.

The movie takes action/gangster movie genre conventions by the scruff of the neck and shakes them till interesting stuff falls out. The editing and cinematography are great. New York looks gritty but beautiful.

True the film is kind of rough round the edges, I guess down to Cassavetes' improvisatory style, however it's a lot more accessible than most of his work and you should see it if you get the chance.

From its buildings, to its busy streets. From the people in the city, to the culture that created it, John Cassavetes perfectly captures the true essence of NYC. The true grit of the city, the core of the apple. The setting of the film is real. Unlike the remake almost twenty years later, NYC does not look like a commercial Disney Land without Mickey. Watching the film, you can smell the dirty hallways in the lower middle class hotels. You can hear the crowded Hispanic neighborhoods. And you can see what NYC is really like in Gloria.

There must be a million woman like Gloria. They never got educated but they're smart. They're good looking, but not enough to get that gangster boyfriend to leave his wife. They hostess or maybe they just are table dressing for as long as they can. They make enough to have a decent apartment, and they hock the gift jewelry and furs and stick the money in a safe deposit box for the day they just can't do it any more. Can't smile and nod and be sweet, and the goombas look to the younger girls for attention. They try to keep quiet and keep their nose clean and ignore the young punks that treat them a little worse every year.

But life can mess up your plans, as it does for Gloria when it dumps an orphaned kid in her lap and some of her p***ed gangster pals at her door. And the decision she makes to save the kid's life means she can never go back.

"Gloria" isn't really about stuff like violence or mobsters or guns at all. It's about the hopes and wishes and loneliness of a life that represents the lives of many invisible woman. Gloria has always been a "broad" as she says. Never the Madonna, to be worshipped and respected. Always the Whore to be stepped on. And it sucks to be at the mercy and whim of men. Especially cruel, stupid thugs who don't have the brains or guts to do anything but lie, cheat, steal, and kill women and children.

Gloria reluctantly gives up her old life. She gave years of her life to these slobs and she doesn't want to lose the little she got for her troubles. She just wants peace and quiet and to be left alone. Why give it up to help some annoying kid?

But when she makes the decision to do just that, her rage and resentment explode.

Gena Rowlands gives a flawless performance that burns bright and makes the viewer feel the rage of those who hide their intelligence and personality and try to "get by" in a world of lesser men. Gloria's got more balls and brains than any of the suits that run the racket. And now she's going to prove it.

"Gloria" is what happens when adults make movies for adults. No childish chatter, no idealized and airbrushed world, no moralizing and preaching. This movie has blood in its veins.

A genre-bending odyssey, full of dank, dark alleys, filthy side streets, buses, taxi cabs, trains and subways, John Cassavetes' film "Gloria" is perhaps the most impersonal of his personal work, which surely inspired Luc Besson's 1994 action-packed "Leon," the film explores the development of the mother-son bond under extreme circumstances.

One of Gena Rowland's most underrated performances, Gloria stands shoulder to shoulder with other iconic heroines of American cinema; such as Dietrich's Shanghai Lily and Uma Thurman's Beatrix Kiddo.

Cassavetes explores new narrative possibilities unlike any other of his contemporaries. Though there always seems to be a surplus of emotion, dialogue or trivialities in his work - and I'm not the first to make such an observation - Cassavetes maintains his focus, which is of course, to show us a slice of life, however extreme or crazy it may appear to an audience.

As the title character in 'Gloria' Gena Rowlands gives a subtle yet powerful performance which gives this John Cassavettes film its soul and its focal point.

On the advent of Sharon Stone's re-characterization of 'Gloria' in the 1999 Sidney Lumet re-make it bares mentioning that while Ms. Stone is wonderfully talented the passionate yet understated performance that Gena Rowlands gives in the original can't & won't be topped.

As a woman confronted with a life or death decision, to save her own or that of a child orphaned by the mafia, Ms. Rowlands brings us a character that we can all relate to, a woman caught at the crossroads of her life.

If you've ever had to make any sort of 'Should I stay or should I go' life changing desicion and you're thinking of seeing the current re-make I encourage you to rent the original as well, you won't be disappointed!

No American movie so ambivalent as Gloria. Is it a good movie or a bad? Frankly, I just don't know. I saw this film as part of a series of classic movies in a Dutch cinema. New copy! the ad said and I never saw the movie from beginning to end. Reason enough to go. Speaking about the end... It did disappoint me a lot. After watching Gena walking on high heals through New York for two hours, Cassavetes surprises me with this terrible Hollywood ending! But after reading some of the comments on IMDb I rather give it a second thought. So Cassavetes shot the end of Gloria in black and white? I didn't know that. It makes a difference. Why the hell would Gloria come to the cemetery in a mob car in stead of just a regular cab? And why dressed up as the boy's grandmother? It must be the imagination of the boy. That's why the boy runs in slow motion (and in black and white) to Gloria. Running towards a certain death that is! Cassavetes said in a interview that he didn't want the boy shot in pieces at the end of the movie, but that doesn't mean the boy will survive! So, maybe Cassavetes didn't make a Hollywood ending after all. Let's give Gloria the benefit of the doubt. It's a good movie, worth remembering.

The perfomance of Gena Rowlands is one of the best acting efforts I've ever seen. She's so amazing and credible that still thrill me. She should have won the Oscar. Also, it is remarkable the Bill Conti's score, as well as many of the dialogs. I highly reccomend this movie to all movie-goers.

Gena Rowlands is forthright, appropriately gritty, pithy and generally quite marvelous playing Gloria Swenson, a former mobster's girl in present day New York City who is suddenly saddled with a little Puerto Rican boy, orphaned after his parents were killed by the mob before they could inform to the FBI. Rowlands (who deservedly received an Oscar nomination) trades salty quips with the kid, busts chops, and handles a gun like a pro--and she wakes the audience up every time she gets a showy scene. Unfortunately, this script by director John Cassavetes has nowhere to go in its third act, dragging the film out for an extra 20 minutes. Although "Gloria" was certainly one of the filmmaker's more commercial projects, a peculiar artificiality air hangs about the picture--particularly in the awkward opening scenes--giving the movie an aloof or stilted quality. Remade in 1999 by Sidney Lumet. **1/2 from ****

Good movies are timeless. Or they feel so. Sometimes this is because their subject is universal and it does not really matter what epoch the action is set in. In some other cases the quality of the story and of the acting make the period irrelevant. A good example is 'Gloria', a film made in 1980 by director (and actor) John Cassavetes about whom I knew very little before seeing this film. And yet, 'Gloria' is a gangster movies that keeps the interest of viewers all over the two hours of screen time and looks new and fresh, despite having been filmed almost 40 years ago.

The subject of the film will look familiar, as later movies like Luc Besson's 'Léon' have dealt with the theme of gangsters involved folks meeting and befriending kids, and melting to humanity in the course of the story. 'Gloria' however included from start a big twist. The lead adult hero is a woman, the ex-girlfriend of one of the mob chiefs, who witnesses the murder of the family of a six years old kid (her neighbor) who has nobody left to care about him and no place to go. Taking him under her protection means placing her in conflict with the mob (as the kid holds an accounting book with compromising mafia secrets) and with the law (she is believed to have kidnapped the kid). What follows is a few days of running from everybody and fighting for survival in the New York of 1980.

The New York in the film is a city that looks so familiar: the streets (much dirtier and more dangerous), the buildings (combining modern and decrepit), the skyline (with the painful silhouettes of the twin towers), the people who look so much the same as the diverse human landscape of the big city we know. The only major thing that seems to have changed is the value of the dollar. It may be as difficult as 40 years ago to change a 100 dollars bill, but two dollars fifty cents would not be sufficient nowadays for any room in a city hotel, probably not even for a tip in any city hotel. The other ingredient that makes the film interesting is the excellent acting performance of Gena Rowlands who partners with the young John Adames, a kid actor who did not grow into an adult actor. She is vulnerable as a woman who does not like kids (her cat is collateral damage in the first minutes of the film) and has a troubled past, yet strong as she knows the language and manners of the crime world and how to survive it. The ending is a little disappointing, unexpectedly conventional for such a film that is so non-conventional from many points of view, but this does not spoil too much the good impression left by this fresh classic.

I have not seen the remake of GLORIA yet, and needless to say, I'm not looking forward to it. Not to say that Sharon Stone can't play a tough female, who's self-imposed as a bodyguard for a kid running from mobsters. It is just that Gena Rowlands is so much more versatile, and her range so much wider, and I just KNOW that Stone won't be able to cut it. So, I will stop speculating, and get to the facts.

GLORIA is a film that Cassavete's made as an antidote to brainless, violent action films. All of the violence has dramatic purpose, and nothing is pointless here. This may be off-putting to fans of the action genre, but Cassavetes' contempt for the genre is what makes GLORIA more interesting. There are several unexpected twists.

When the film begins, Gloria is a street-smart woman who is kind of "married" to the mob. Gloria has a tomboyish quality that lends credibility to the fact that she has lived this long. She looks out for herself, first and foremost.

This changes when a weasel, and friend,of Gloria's (Buck Henry) is murdered by her mobster friends. Henry and his wife are killed, leaving behind a scared child. The little boy is a witness to the murder, and the mobsters make chase.

Gloria feels her maternal instincts begin to take over, and begrudgingly protects the boy. As the film progresses, however, she becomes more sincere in her protection, and she draws the line further for the mobsters. She has survived in the harsh city for this long, so it is easy to assume that she knows how to stay alive.

GLORIA is by no means Cassavete best film. There are long stretches that test your patience, that can sometimes seem static. But, as much as I dislike this quality, I am familiar with several Cassavetes' films, and understand what he is trying to achieve. Cassavetes is a very emotional director. He doesn't focus on tragedy; he is more interested in survival and the baggage that that brings. GLORIA is a thinking-person's thriller, and if you prefer big explosions and high body-counts, go and see DIE HARD 2 again. But, if you want to see something different, check this one out.

This movie begins with a man named "Jack Dawn" (Buck Henry) attempting to escape with his family from the mob in New York. As it so happens, Jack was an accountant for the mafia and had secretly kept a book which detailed all of the illegal transactions carried by his boss. Incensed by the fact that he might be planning on handing the book over to the police, the word is out that Jack and his entire family are to be killed immediately. Realizing his predicament Jack convinces his neighbor named "Gloria Swenson" (Gena Rowlands) to take care of his young son "Phil Dawn" (John Adames) for a short time while he can figure out his next move. Unfortunately, no sooner does he give Phil to her then some hitmen arrive and proceed to kill everyone except Gloria and Phil who manage to escape. Not only that, but Phil has in his possession the book which the mob is desperate to get their hands on. From that point on both Gloria and Phil become fugitives in a city with numerous mobsters intent upon retrieving the book and killing both of them in the process. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say this this was a decent crime-drama made better by the excellent performance of Gena Rowlands who played her character to near perfection. Having said that, however, there were more than a few repetitious scenes which made things seem a bit redundant at times. Even so, I enjoyed this film for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

You start with flinty, streetsmart gangster types, cross their paths with a little kid, put them in urban peril, and then you squeeze how things stack up for sentimentality, suspense and humor. It's a charming idea, and perhaps that's why this could be considered John Cassavetes's most conventional film. It tells the story of a gangster's girlfriend who goes on the run with a young boy who is being pursued by the mob for information he doesn't even know he might have. But he wants to tell the story his own way, obstructing every convention we would normally expect, instilling a realist perspective in how we follow the movie, making the pay-off that much more worthwhile. Cassavetes didn't intend to direct his script. He just wanted to sell the story to Columbia Pictures. But once his wife Gena Rowlands was asked to play Gloria, she obliged Cassavetes to direct it.

This underdog crime drama is particularly absorbing in its first hour, and ignites with a great beginning. We follow one character, it leads to another character, perspectives are interknit, the situation builds and Cassavetes has complete control over what we know and expect, all in spite of the all-too-familiar premise, which is then set for the rest of the movie, which is a cat-and-mouse hunt per the seedier locales of New York and New Jersey. He makes the threat so real that when the two key characters evade tangible danger, we still feel the tension whenever they round a corner, get in and out of cabs, and other such ordinary actions. He doesn't let on that unwanted company is present. It just happens. There is one scene that lasts for quite awhile before we realize, after Rowlands's title character does, that unwanted company has been there the entire time.

In an Oscar-nominated performance, Rowlands is expectedly the beautiful lead actress, but she sports a kind of masculine quality, creating a much more dense dynamic when she, afraid of her maternal instincts, finds them overpowering her lifelong self-preservation, and begrudgingly protects the boy. As the film progresses, however, she becomes more sincere in her protection, and integrates her love with her seasoned familiarity with how to stay alive in this town. In one creative take on the Fine, I Don't Need You Anyway scene, she asks a bartender, "There's reasons I can't turn and just look, but is there a little kid headed in here or across the street or whatever?" She drives her role with such honest irritable liveliness. Yet the kid is also well cast. He was a conspicuous little boy named John Adames with dark hair, big eyes and a way of trucking his dialogue as if confronting you to adjust a single word. It all works because everything about his character, the way he dresses, talks, revolts and moves, serves the naive notion that he is older, smarter and cooler than he is.

Cassavetes has a natural keenness for guilelessly unadorned location shooting in that he never plans, stages, waits on the weather or time of day, or hires extras or stunt drivers. Note how passers-by in the distance will often look on at the characters, whether Gloria has pulled a gun in a public place or not. Wherever the characters need to be, that place is in real time, as dirty, scuzzy and purely of the film's era as it would've normally been. There's a shabby flophouse where the clerk tells Gloria, "Just pick a room. They're all open." There are bus stations, back alleys, dimly lit hallways, and bars that open at dawn. And his occasional action scenes are so thrilling because of their surprise.

For once, Cassavetes doesn't stage indefinitely extensive scenes of dialogue wherein the actors indulge in their own view of their characters' unraveling. But I miss that. As I've already said, I am very impressed with how tightly he mounts suspense from the very beginning, how Gloria and the kid zip from cab to bus to cab to street to hotel to cab and so on. But regardless of how doggedly realistic he is in his portrayal of a recycled movie plot, he still relies upon that plot rather than the impositions of his characters flexing their wings.

Young Phil is the only surviving member of his family after the mob kills his mob accountant father Jack and everybody else. Jack's been stealing from the mob and informing the FBI. The mob is after Jack's book on the mob. Jack sent the book and Phil to their neighbor friend Gloria Swenson (Gena Rowlands). Phil is a brat and Gloria hates kids. They go on the run from the mob as she tries to work out a way to save themselves.

This is the classic collaboration between director John Cassavetes and his wife Gena Rowlands. It has his gritty documentary indie style and the rundown NYC setting. The formula is simple. John behind the camera and Gena in front of the camera. That's all anybody needs to know about this movie. Gena just has so much skills portraying this woman. I'm not as kind with the kid but he's just a kid from the neighborhood. He's just too big I AM THE MAN! He has limited skills to play with. The movie can be a bit uneven especially with the pacing but it's a must see for Cassavetes and Rowlands fans.

Why have I never heard of this movie before, I caught it by chance in the UK on a channel called Talking Pictures (great channel by the way).

It's really a two character movie, Gena Rowlands plays Gloria and John Adames who plays the young boy Phil, a Puerto Rican. The young boys family has just been murdered by the mob, and it's up to Gloria to get the boy to safety. He has his Dad's book which the Mob wants. Gloria is friends with the Mob, but she's also a bit fiesty so she tries to protect the young boy.

This is one of the best ever lead roles by an actress I've ever seen and Gena is absolutely brilliant as Gloria, the young boy is also excellent. A hidden gem of a movie, in the UK anyway.

"Gloria" is probably the only Cassavetes' film that relies on a formulaic plot: the improbable pairing that turns into a friendship and I suspect it's the most likely to disorient the hardcore fans of Cassavetes' unique directorial style, in other words, to be the least appreciated of his films. Still, it's the one that earned Gena Rowlands, the most defining face of the director's filmography, her second nomination for an Oscar.

It's hard to believe that Gena Rowlands only had two nominations in her career, and that she didn't even win for "A Woman Under the Influence" which belongs to the list of the greatest female performances ever. Never mind. Here, Gena portrays Gloria, the neighbor of a doomed Puerto-Rican family. She enters as casually as ever to ask for some coffee and finds herself in the middle of a panic-stricken family scene. And what seems to be more inexplicable that the casting of Buck Henry as the geeky waspish connected-to-the-mob father (I loved Roger Ebert's comment on that one) is the way he jeopardized his family's life by threatening to give some names to the FBI, names that were all conveniently collected in a little book. After a quick second thought, the casting of Buck Henry is top notch, he looks like the kind of men to commit such incredible mistakes, and as we see him argue with his wife, remarkably played by the beautiful Julie Carmen, the feeling of urgency is efficiently conveyed. Indeed, we know it's only a matter of minutes before the gangsters start shooting and Gloria's entrance is like providence knocking on the door.

Gloria is a blonde woman in her late forties or early fifties (Gena Rowlands was 50), she's single but she probably seen a lot in her bed, she doesn't like kids and especially Carmen's kids, a touch of irony that makes her the perfect candidate to take care of little Phil, the eight-year old son who'd keep his father's book. Gloria has the perfect mix of sophistication and street-wise attitude, and I guess one of the reasons that earned her an Oscar nomination is that she literally created something new on screen. Gloria has some mimics that remind of Gena's earliest roles, and her accent is just a delight for ears, but then when she suddenly pulled a gun off her purse, it's a total metamorphosis, and a landmark in Cassavetes's canon. For the first time, an actor transfigures a character to make the role appealing on a true cinematic level, regardless of any realistic approach. Gloria becomes a true heroine in all the meanings of the word without the sexiness of usual exploitations' female protagonists.

"You're so tough" will repeat little Phil, with eyes that are either impressed or full of love. Is it realistic that a child would fall in love with a woman like Gloria? I don't think any child would but then not any child would have been casted for that role. Here, Cassavetes did one incredible choice, because either John Adames' performance is one of the best or the worst when it comes to child acting. I still haven't made up my mind yet but I do believe it was absolutely distasteful for the Razzies to give the award of Worst Supporting Actor to a child. Now, was he good or bad? I felt the way he was dressed very weird, sometimes the way he delivered his lines was whiny and irritating, and when he was playing adult and tough, I was like "gee, what's wrong with this kid?" but then you understand that as much as the film would have been different without Gena Rowlands, it would have been maybe worse with a 'normal' kid. I mean 'normal' by cinematic standards. Could have you dealt with the same story told by Spielberg?

Kids have a strange ability to outsmart adults in movies or to act in the most insolent, eccentric and annoying way as if they were comforted by the tacit rule that 'kids don't die in films'. Think of all the ones you saw in Disaster films, little boys who were braver than their whiny sisters (another stereotype), who displayed an insolent courage in front of the villains when any normal child would have wept or cried for his mommy. In the name of dramatization, the portrayal of little boys and little girls has suffered from a severe distance from reality. Cassavetes never cared for clichés and you could see in his earlier films how children kind of behaved naturally, where adults were the most childish persons actually. In "Gloria", he creates here a kid so cinematically abnormal that we can believe a boy would act that way, the way he delivers his lines, the content of these lines can be debated but I'd rather take his attitude than one that would obey to a standard. At the end, he fitted the role, didn't ruin the film and the best measure of that aspect is his chemistry with Gloria.

While the friendship is the emotional core, the film strikes by its abundances of cat-and- mouse scenes, the gangster looking for Gloria, Gloria herself looking for Phil. Thanks to the directing and the score from Bill Conti, sometimes a bit overdone, the dosage between thrills and sentiments is perfectly handled and allow us to grow some feelings toward these two characters. In a way, the film carries so much comedy beyond the drama that we couldn't have dealt with a sad ending. And Cassavetes, aware that he's not probably making the highlight of his career, let the events flow naturally until a climactic confrontation and a finale that concludes the film in a very satisfying way.

"Gloria" could have been better, but it also could have been worse. Just ask yourself what if another director made "Gloria"

Gloria Swenson's a gun moll all growed up. The mob ain't got time for her no more, and instead of getting' her kicks like she did in the good 'ole days, she lives alone with her cat in a crappy joint in the slums of New York. It ain't much, but it's something, and she's gotta live, ya know? Now get lost.

Gloria may have a sordid past in her wake, but she is certainly not a floozy with a few wrinkles too many. She is a tough-as-nails presence that has been around the block plenty of times, unafraid of anything except maybe the cold eyes of death. Gloria is also portrayed by Gena Rowlands, and Gloria is directed by John Cassavetes, her husband.

Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes are national treasures, but when your finest pieces of work are confined to ambitiously outlandish independent films, you're bound to only be remembered by the critics who don't have much fun watching Vin Diesel's newest vehicle. They teamed up seven times, but Gloria is the closest thing they ever got to the word "conventional." Despite a slightly over-the-top soundtrack, possibly a quirk added by the mercurial Cassavetes, gone are his usual touches of slapped around camera-work and obvious improvisations. With Gloria, he's an auteur taking a vacation, and it makes for one of his most entertaining, if not one of his deepest, projects.

The movie begins in ruins; Jack Dawn (Buck Henry) has made the mistake of double-crossing the mob. Not only has he been skimming money from the profits of their various crimes, but he has also been acting as an informant for the FBI. He, along with his family, are barricaded in a crammed apartment, attempting to hold off hired guns for as long as possible. Then Gloria, a neighbor, comes knocking on their door. She wants to borrow sugar, but instead gets Jack's son, Phil (John Adames). Then the inevitable happens: Phil is orphaned, and Gloria, reluctantly, is forced to take him in. Problem is, the mob knows about it. After this set-up pulls through, the rest of the film acts as a punchy and darkly funny game of cat-and-mouse between Gloria, her newfound Puerto Rican child friend, and, well, the mob.

Gloria's only downfall is that it becomes a little monotonous after a while — you can only handle Phil running away and Gloria having to chase after him for so long — but it's much too lovable to really get on your nerves. For once, Cassavetes backs off and lets Rowlands be the star of the show; in the past, it was as if Cassavetes and Rowlands were headlining together (not a bad thing), looking like the cool boho versions of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. But even Ginger Rogers had to have Kitty Foyle all to herself.

Everything about Rowlands — her light but steely Wisconsin accent, her big hair, her hastily put-on red lipstick, her cheap high heels — is dynamite. In her other films with Cassavetes (1974's A Woman Under the Influence, 1977's Opening Night), she has had to pour out every emotion she's ever felt, as if she were stripping naked in front of a crowd. But in Gloria, it's clear that she's having fun. Rowlands carries a gun with imposing authority, like a street tough that surprises you with their scrappiness. Even better is her chemistry with the loud and unintentionally funny Adames, who spits out every line with bracing liberation. Gloria is engaging but intimidating, but Phil doesn't much care, and when she can't turn her usual tricks to get him to behave, the playfulness of the film climbs every mountain and fords every stream.

Gloria runs a little long at two hours, but it isn't without its charms. Rowlands is a wonderful, wonderful actress, and there isn't a second of the film where we don't ask ourselves what we did to deserve a talent this great in the movie business. I adore Cassavetes with just as much fuss, but this time around, it isn't his show. It's hers, and that's not a bad thing.