Gena Rowlands

A Woman Under the Influence

Gloria

Another week, another set of excellent films from a genre suggested by one of the handful of beautiful people who read this blog. (🤢). I love exploring the filmographies of directors and actors, as I’ve done many times throughout this journey, because it allows one to see the depths and peaks to which their talents reach as well as the growth they achieve throughout their career. From Accepted to Wolf of Wall Street, we saw the progression of Jonah Hill’s skills, and how he’s able to embody both scumbaggery and lovability. Even a cursory dive into Jessica Chastain’s career showcased her irrepressible charm and intimidation, regardless of what kind of girl boss she’s playing. And from Cronenberg to Park Chan-wook to Brian De Palma, we’ve learned that directorial style can bend and evolve and even become unrecognizable at times. This week’s cinematic study brings us to the films of indie movie pioneer John Cassavettes and his muse, the incomparable Gena Rowlands. As iconic as their joint careers have been, John Cassavettes is often best known for his starring role in Rosemary’s Baby, and Gena Rowlands is more contemporarily known for her role in The Notebook—directed by their son, Nick. (Out of all of the gut-wrenching cinema I’ve seen, this movie still takes the cake and tops my list of “Movies That Put Me in a Bad Mood”—after Mulholland Drive, of course.) It should be noted that Gena Rowlands has had a continuously successful career, even as she enters her nineties, because her screen presence is undeniably captivating. No one else could’ve played her part in one of the most underrated horror films of the twenty-first century, The Skeleton Key, and the same goes for every other role she’s inhabited. She is a true auteur—a performer who commits to her parts like a surgeon prepares for surgery. After watching her fleeting but unforgettable performance in Night On Earth, a further exploration of Gena’s power and prowess was completely necessary. I began with the 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence—a film that seems to have been created solely to showcase Gena Rowlands’ acting capabilities, and showcase them it did. The film is centered around Mabel: a housewife and mother of three who suffers from various, undiagnosed mental illnesses. The seventies was certainly a time of innovation and revolution, particularly within communities of women, but we’d yet to make the strides within mental health awareness and resources that we (somewhat) have now. Peter Falk aka detective Columbo aka detective Sam Diamond, plays an equally mentally unstable role as Mabel’s husband—horribly unaware of how to properly care for his wife though he clearly wants to. It’s an interesting case study of how we treat not just the mentally ill, but those who are even slightly different from us, socially. Between the moments of cruelty and confusion that were difficult to watch, there are some beautiful moments of compassion—mostly from Mabel’s young children, who see her as nothing more than their loving, wonderful mother. Columbo, I mean Peter Falk, simultaneously wishes for Mabel to be herself and to be “normal”, often sending the most mixed of messages to an already overwhelmed woman. It almost brought me back to Lars and the Real Girl’s rendering of weirdness that was accepted with patience and kindness that was, as a result, puzzling and uplifting, though this film is far from heartwarming. The way this film was shot, edited, and mixed, can only be described only as chaotic—causing the audience to perhaps feel just as insane as Mabel is meant to feel. It’s not just visually disorienting in a Safdie brother or Ryan Murphy way, but rather in a slower, subtler, more unnerving fashion that lets in moments of quiet, and peacefulness even, among the destruction. John Cassavettes is known for the emphasis he places upon his performers, rather than the story itself, and A Woman Under the Influence is the best example of this. Gena Rowlands gives an unflinchingly dedicated performance, delivering moments of anguish as well as levity from the smallest movements and line deliveries and facial expressions. I was completely transfixed by everything she did, and even in the most unpleasant of scenes, I was unable to look away. I have to wonder why this film was not shown in any of the feminist film theory classes that I took in college, because when it comes to studying different, significant portrayals of women in film, A Woman Under the Influence feels like sacred text. Mabel is overcome with emotion and confusion for the majority of the film, but it is when she takes the role of caretaker, host, and mother that she is completely lucid, charismatic even. Nurturing is so deeply ingrained in her instincts, in her psyche, that she is able to almost break out of her manic states when she is needed. Gena’s portrayal of Mabel made her a dynamic, interesting character, and in fact the only character I was terribly invested in, and I felt this exact way while viewing Gloria. In a complete 180 from her submissive, complicated role as Mabel, John Cassavettes wrote Gloria, a mob story surrounding a tough, no-nonsense Gena Rowlands who embodied a completely different flavor of unhinged. Gloria follows a brassy, sassy woman who is forced to take her neighbor’s child on the run, after his parents are killed by the mafia. A simple-enough premise, made once again unique and untouchable by the incomparable Gena, became more and more engrossing as it went on. All at once funny, sweet, and suspenseful as hell, Gena led this film with guns blazing and no fucks given, and I couldn’t get enough of it. The fact that there’s more than one scene where Gloria shoots first then asks questions later, was hilarious and just amazing to see, especially in 1980, when there weren’t all that many female-led action films—certainly not ones with older women at the helm. This film was giving Leon the Professional before Leon even became a professional, with a tough adult and an orphaned child at the center of its story (with less creepy romantic implications, but still some, which is… weird.) From its cinematography to its attitude to its costuming that featured Gena in lovely pops of color and the child (John Adames) in shirts the Bee Gees would wear, to Gena Rowlands head-palm acting, I once again couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen. Gloria was equally as feminist as A Woman Under the Influence, though it was easier to watch, and delivers an entirely different side of the Rowlands/Cassavettes experience. It appears that John Cassavettes only ever placed his wife in stressful scenarios on screen, but for this I am thankful, because Miss Rowlands stole every single scene and always left me wanting more.