A Woman Under the Influence is a 1974 American drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes, and starring his wife Gena Rowlands and close friend Peter Falk. Rowlands plays a housewife whose unusual behavior leads to conflict with her blue-collar husband (Falk) and family.
The film was Cassavetes' seventh as director, and was produced and distributed independently of major studios like most of his other films. The movie exhibits a highly naturalistic style in acting and camerawork compared to most Hollywood films from the era. It premiered at the 1974 New York Film Festival, before going into wide theatrical release on November 18, 1974. It received two Academy Award nominations: for Best Director and Best Actress (for Rowlands). Rowlands won a Golden Globe Award and National Board of Review Award for her performance.
Since its release, the film has been regarded as Cassavetes' magnum opus, with Rowlands' performance often being cited as one of the best of all time. In 1990, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant", being one of the first fifty films to be listed.
At the start, the crew consisted mainly of professionals and students from the American Film Institute, where Cassavetes was serving as the first "filmmaker in residence" at their Center for Advanced Film Studies. Cassavetes enlisted non-professional actors to play some roles, including many of his own family members. Working with a limited budget forced him to shoot scenes in a real house near Hollywood Boulevard, and Rowlands was responsible for her own hairstyling and makeup. Rowlands' depiction of a mental breakdown was once so convincing that Cassavetes stopped the take and rushed to see if she was okay.
Sound and editing
Cassavetes enlisted Bo Harwood to create music for the film, and later also gave him the job of recording the film's audio. He had also enlisted Harwood to play music with a piano. Harwood, then an unemployed rock musician, was initially hesitant, as he had never made a soundtrack, played piano or done sound recording before, but accepted the job. An initial cut of the movie was 3 hours and 50 minutes long, which was then cut down to a 155 minute edit and then the final 147 minute runtime.
Release
Upon completion of the film, Cassavetes was unable to find a distributor, so he personally called theater owners and asked them to show it. He got it booked at art houses and shown on college campuses, where he and Falk would discuss it with the audience. According to Jeff Lipsky, a college student who was hired to help distribute the film: "It was the first time in the history of motion pictures that an independent film was distributed without the use of a nationwide system of sub-distributors." On September 21, 2004, The Criterion Collection released the film—together with Shadows (1959), Faces (1968), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), and Opening Night (1977)—in Region 1 as part of the eight-disc DVD box set John Cassavetes: Five Films. Bonus features for the film include an audio commentary by composer and sound recordist Bo Harwood and camera operator Mike Ferris, a video conversation between Rowlands and Falk, an essay by film critic Kent Jones, and audio and written interviews with Cassavetes from 1975. On October 22, 2013, the box set was re-released on Blu-ray.
Reception
thumb|[[Gena Rowlands received widespread acclaim for her performance as Mabel Longhetti]]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 40 critics' reviews of the film are positive; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Electrified by searing performances from Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, A Woman Under the Influence finds pioneering independent filmmaker John Cassavetes working at his artistic peak." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 88 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Contemporary reviews
Nora Sayre of The New York Times observed: "Miss Rowlands unleashes an extraordinary characterization. ... The actress's style of performing sometimes shows a kinship with that of the early Kim Stanley or the recent Joanne Woodward, but the notes of desperation are emphatically her own. ... Peter Falk gives a rousing performance ... and the children are very well directed. But the movie didn't need to be 2 hours and 35 minutes long: there's too much small talk, which doesn't really reveal character. Still, the most frightening scenes are extremely compelling, and this is a thoughtful film that does prompt serious discussion."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four, calling it "terribly complicated, involved and fascinating – a revelation", and saying: "The characters are larger than life (although not less convincing because of that), and their loves and rages, their fights and moments of tenderness, exist at exhausting levels of emotion. ... Cassavetes is strongest as a writer and filmmaker at creating specific characters and then sticking with them through long, painful, uncompromising scenes until we know them well enough to read them, to predict what they'll do next and even to begin to understand why." He later added the film to his "Great Movies" list, in which he called it "perhaps the greatest of Cassavetes' films".
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, however, condemned the film as a "didactic illustration of (R.D.) Laing's version of insanity.” Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic also panned the film in his 1974 review, writing: "To me this film is utterly without interest or merit". John Simon, noted for his frequently caustic and disparaging reviews, called the film "dreadful."
Time Out London wrote: "The brilliance of the film lies in its sympathetic and humorous exposure of social structure. Rowlands unfortunately overdoes the manic psychosis at times, and lapses into a melodramatic style which is unconvincing and unsympathetic; but Falk is persuasively insane as the husband; and the result is an astonishing, compulsive film, directed with a crackling energy." TV Guide gave the film four stars out of four, calling it "tough-minded", "moving", and "an insightful essay on sexual politics."
Legacy
In the years after its release, the film has continued to receive acclaim. Première listed Rowlands' performance as one of the "100 Greatest Movie Performances of All Time", and critic Jim Hemphill named her performance as "one of cinema’s all-time greatest". In Sight and Sounds 2012 poll of the greatest films of all time, the film placed 59th in the directors' poll and 144th in the critics' poll. In 2015, the BBC named A Woman Under the Influence the 31st greatest American film ever made. In 1990, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", one of the first fifty films to be listed. As of 2024, the film is one of the top 250 highest rated narrative feature films on the aggregate rating website Letterboxd.
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| Best Actress
| Gena Rowlands
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| Belgian Film Critics Association
| colspan="2"| Grand Prix
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| rowspan="4"| Golden Globe Awards
| colspan="2"| Best Motion Picture – Drama
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| align="center" rowspan="4"|
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| Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
| Gena Rowlands
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| Best Director – Motion Picture
| rowspan="2"| John Cassavetes
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| Best Screenplay – Motion Picture
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| Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards
| Best Actress
| Gena Rowlands
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| align="center"|
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| rowspan="2"| National Board of Review Awards
| colspan="2"| Top Ten Films
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| align="center" rowspan="2"|
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| Best Actress
| Gena Rowlands
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| National Film Preservation Board
| colspan="2"| National Film Registry
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| rowspan="3"| San Sebastián International Film Festival
| Silver Seashell
| John Cassavetes
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| align="center" rowspan="3"|
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| Best Actress
| Gena Rowlands
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| OCIC Award (Honorable Mention)
| rowspan="2"| John Cassavetes
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| Writers Guild of America Awards
| Best Drama – Written Directly for the Screen
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| align="center"|
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Analysis
In a 1975 critical analysis, David Degener argued the film relied ambiguous about concepts such as “madness", but ultimately criticized it for this ambiguity, claiming that it “didn’t tell me anything about women and madness” while comparing it to the writing of feminist Phyllis Chesler.
In popular culture
The film is referenced in the Gilmore Girls episode "To Live and Let Diorama", which is a favorite movie of showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino. It contains a direct imitation of a scene in the film, where Mabel is on the street asking passersby for the time.
Restoration and preservation
The world premiere screening of a restored print of the film was held at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on April 26, 2009, as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Gena Rowlands attended the premiere and spoke briefly. The restoration was performed by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, with funding provided by Gucci and The Film Foundation.
See also
- List of American films of 1974
- Mental illness in film
- Bipolar disorder
Notes
References
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
- A Woman Under the Influence essay by Ray Carney at National Film Registry
- A Woman Under the Influence essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 , pages 709–710.
- A Woman Under the Influence: The War at Home an essay by Kent Jones at the Criterion Collection
- "All Naked, All The Time: Gertrude Stein and John Cassavetes" – a close reading of the film with comparisons to Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha"