Remembering: “A Woman Under The Influence”
I’m a fan of John Cassavetes.
1974’s, A Woman Under the Influence, is a stunning and artful depiction of comorbidity between mental illness and alcoholism. Within its 155 minute runtime, Cassavetes manages to grip and take us on an emotional rollercoaster, utilizing a cinéma vérité sensibility throughout. There’s a documentarian’s lens to which we follow Mabel Longhetti (amazingly played by Gena Rowlands, then-wife of Cassavetes), seeing her at her most vulnerable, angry, confused and intoxicated, as if a fly on the wall. Columbo’s Peter Falk plays opposite to Rowlands as her husband Nick, the quick-tempered, blue-collar if-similarly alcoholic caretaker (played convincing, impassioned). Mabel’s cooccurring mental health adversity is shot without reservation, something of an unnerving experience to those who might have their own histories with such subject matter; this film may be quintessential in its depiction about the effects of alcoholism and untreated mental illness on family (in addition to their subsequent dysfunction). Underneath it all, however, there remains an emanant beauty within the messiness, quietly profound yet, disturbing nonetheless.
Peter Falk as “Nick Longhetti” and Gena Rowlands as “Mabel Longhetti”
As far as a plot, there’s about nothing to really write home for. Being it as an independent, cinéma vérité production (legend has it, Cassavetes’s company, Faces, was unable to find distributors because of the film’s nature), we aren’t meant to focus on the ‘Story’ per se, but rather, engage with the emotional, aesthetic and artistic texturization. Sure, there’s a very concrete arc regarding Nick and Mabel’s marriage throughout alcohol and mental illness, but I’d argue the story is more vehicular to explore their characterizations. For instance, in one beautiful, moving, and salacious sequence, we spend – for what feels like forever – on a group meal between the Longhetti’s and Nick’s construction crew, the ‘Plot’ moving at a snail’s crawl. We watch Nick’s crew lumber in fast-talking, drinking, then soon-helping Mabel prepare a large batch of spaghetti. During this, Mabel (seemingly) drifts in and out of cognizance, forgetting the time of day, people’s names, casually tossing off sexual harassment by one man, then flirts with another right in front of Nick. What’s important soon becomes apparent onscreen: despite dysfunction within their marriage, there exists temporaneous, fleeting moments of beauty amid whirlwind...and it’s for that, do I find this film compelling.
Mabel drinks and smokes a racket, even though she’s a stay-at-home mother and tasked with watching their three small children. Her characterization spans a slew of psycho-emotional bits, at-moments serenely intoxicated, other times bordering on belligerent, histrionic, impulsive, physically abusive, or abused herself-it’s all there. Meanwhile, Nick is seen to be unsure of himself, impossibly patient if-saintly in some moments, and at other times, wrathful without temperance. Their interplay is of a dance on its own, each spouse pulling then pushing at the other, yet perhaps the biggest victims of their inconsistency and dysfunction are their kids. In one (surprisingly) poetic and edifying scene, Nick – shown at his wits’ end – rides on the back of a supply truck with his children, who shows little reluctance when they each ask to have a sip of booze, of which he obliges. It’s this, the explicit, unverbalized characterizations that make A Woman Under The Influence remarkable of its own right, and especially in-contrast to modern filmmaking’s approach to overly explain and/or rationalize everything. For myself, Cassavetes represents the age-old adage of, “show, don’t tell.”
A good sister film to this (I feel) would be the Dennis Hopper penned-and-directed, 1980’s Out of the Blue. Both movies parallel another in many ways, their focal tenets of low-budget, independent filmmaking. As with the many films depicting addiction, it’s fair to say that despite A Woman Under The Influence’s good performances, there lies certain moments that seem to overly “go for it,” if that makes sense. The fine line between drama and unintended comedy is razor thin, for which Cassavetes dances upon and (mostly) pulls off – however, near the end the second act, some of Rowlands’s takes veer into almost-camp territory, a hair’s length from Faye Dunaway’s depiction of Joan Crawford in 1981’s, Mommie Dearest (i.e. “overacting,” or aka, how to unintentionally become a drag queen icon). More so, I’d say this won’t be your average film-goer’s cup of tea, considering the two-and-a-half-hour film lingers so much throughout, the pacing alone might turn folks off who’re geared towards more modern filmmaking. Though the performances are loud, this is a subtle and nuanced film, in my opinion akin to Chantel Akerman’s 1975, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (e.g. a three-and-a-half-hour film and cinéma vérité exploration/study of characterization, filmographic texture, and convention).
I was a big fan of Cassavetes’s 1958, jazz-inspired Shadows, which perhaps geared me for what to expect going into this movie. Though his movies remain today as bonafide cinephile fodder, I believe Cassavetes will linger on as an underrated poet within film. Watching A Woman Under The Influence reminded me of my own convictions and gravitations in creative writing, of why I even write in the first place, or how I try. Filmmakers such as Cassavetes or Goddard, Bergman, Truffaut, Fellini, capture a spirit about the moment, the superfluous, fleeting yet profound and monumental transience about our existences. Sometimes when I leave a film, there’s a part of me that stays in with them, the characters, inside a tangelo glow of sunset, the heavy reach of cigarette smoke perfuming a wood-paneled room, the residual volume of argument descending to crinkling ambiance; A Woman Under The Influence captured part of my heart and imagination, invoking a sense that, somehow, this film will stick around long after I’ve seen it.
