John Cassavetes

  • John Cassavetes – Faces (1968)

    John Cassavetes1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaUSA

    A middle-aged man leaves his wife for another woman. Shortly after, his ex-wife also begins a relationship with a younger partner. The film follows their struggles to find love amongst each other.Read More »

  • John Cassavetes – The Killing of a Chinese Bookie [108 minute cut] (1976)

    1971-1980CrimeDramaJohn CassavetesUSA

    Quote:
    The killing of a Chinese Bookie was released in 1976 after what Cassavetes
    described as a very rushed editing period. The film was a commercial failure
    and was pulled from the theaters after seven days. Two years later after the
    completion of Opening Night, Cassavets re-edited the film-cutting nearly
    thirty minutes-and re-released it in the version presented here.Read More »

  • John Cassavetes – A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

    1971-1980DramaJohn CassavetesUSA

    Quote:
    A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE is a love story of a troubled marriage between a working class man, Nick (played movingly by Peter Falk), and his wife Mabel (played with brilliant attention to emotional nuance by Gena Rowlands). Mabel appears to be experiencing a breakdown, though there is not much difference between her normal and abnormal behaviour. The film explores the impact of her fragility, neediness, and shifts of feeling on Nick, their three children, relatives, and friends.Read More »

  • John Cassavetes – A Child Is Waiting (1963)

    1961-1970DramaJohn CassavetesUSA

    Quote:
    Dr. Matthew Clark is the head of a state institution for mentally retarded children. Jean Hansen, a former music teacher anxious to give her life some meaning, joins the staff of the hospital. Jean, who tries to shelter the children with her love, suspiciously regards Clark’s stern training methods. She becomes emotionally involved with 12-year-old Reuben Widdicombe, who has been abandoned by his divorced parents.Read More »

  • John Cassavetes – Too Late Blues (1961)

    1961-1970DramaJohn CassavetesUSA

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    Quote:
    Independence is a crucial part of the legend of John Cassavetes, the original Method actor turned DIY filmmaker. For that reason his early forays into studio directing — he made 1961’s “Too Late Blues” for Paramount and 1963’s Stanley Kramer-produced “A Child Is Waiting” for United Artists — are usually thought of as footnotes at best, or compromised failures at worst (a view that has been ascribed to Cassavetes himself).

    But even in these minor works, the Cassavetes touch — the delicate way of handling emotional messiness, the tough but ultimately generous view of human behavior — is unmistakable. The rarely seen “Too Late Blues,” new to DVD from Olive Films, is an especially resonant work, a parable about the price of artistic independence and the conflicts of ego and idealism — in other words, something like a confessional manifesto from the emerging director, 31 when he made it.Read More »

  • John Cassavetes – Cassavetes Gazzara Rowlands 1978 Interview (1978)

    USA1971-1980ArthouseDocumentaryJohn Cassavetes

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    This is a raw-footage version of a group interview for some unspecified TV station at a restaurant from 1978 with Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, Seymour Cassell and Paul Stewart on the occasion of Opening Night being released. It starts out with some general career-spanning questions to Cassavetes and then eventually gets into Opening Night with Cassavetes exhorting people to go see it in his own inimitable way. Mostly we hear from Cassavetes, Rowlands, Gazzara and Paul Stewart, with just a few reactions from Seymour Cassell who is sitting by listening and smoking.Read More »

  • John Cassavetes – “The Lloyd Bridges Show” A Pair of Boots (1962)

    1961-1970John CassavetesShort FilmTVUSA

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    The first of two episodes of the Lloyd Bridges show directed by Cassavetes. Featuring familiar faces from his stable of actors – this time its John Marley and Seymour Cassel from Faces (among other films).Read More »

  • John Cassavetes – “The Lloyd Bridges Show” My Daddy Can Lick Your Daddy (1963)

    1961-1970John CassavetesShort FilmTVUSA

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    The second of two episodes of the Lloyd Bridges show directed by Cassavetes. Again featuring familiar faces from his stable of actors – this time its Lelia Goldani from Shadows and Fred Draper from Faces.Read More »

  • John Cassavetes – A Woman Under the Influence [+Extras] (1974)

    1971-1980DramaJohn CassavetesUSA

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    ‘A Woman Under Influence’ Stars Gena Rowlands as Frenetic Wife:The Cast

    When a husband and wife need to keep saying how much they love each other, something’s apt to be awfully wrong. That nervous repetition is one of the danger signals in John Cassavetes’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” and it contains all the warning urgency of a siren. The movie played on Saturday at the New York Film Festival.

    Throughout, the film dwells on the abrasions of daily living, centered in the domestic world where each individual grinds on the other’s nerves. Gena Rowlands plays a woman adrift. Her manic, likable, hard-hat husband (Peter Falk) quite hysterically keeps assuring her that everything’s fine. Meanwhile, she looks to him for her identity, asking him to tell her “what” to be, insisting that she’ll “be anything” he wants. Later, he punctuates a horrendous uproar by shouting “Just be yourself!” But she hardly has a self–beyond the bundle of symptoms that make up her hectic public persona.
    Read More »

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