Description: Gena Rowlands plays a nervous actress on the brink of a breakdown as she prepares for the opening night of her Broadway play. The entire movie takes place in the few days prior to the opening and shows the backstage turmoil of a doomed production. Rowlands begins to fall apart when an adoring fan dies in an accident and she is forced to look hard at her life. Starring: Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, Joan Blondell, Ben Gazzara.
Amazon.com: Gena Rowlands stars in John Cassavetes's drama of an aging, alcoholic stage actress in the days leading up to her latest Broadway opening. Just barely keeping herself together, she cracks after a young fan is killed while running after her limousine, continuing to see visions of the woman. Hitting the bottle even harder while her friends turn their heads and haul her off to spiritualists, she finally staggers in, barely able to stand, for her opening night performance. Like all of her collaborations with her writer-director husband, Rowlands is a woman on the verge of collapse, this time a lonely alcoholic whose very life is a performance. Overlong at 144 minutes, the film's long, loose scenes build through uncomfortable small talk and slow, tentative confrontations. Some of the scenes are edgy and thrilling, though many find this facet of Cassavetes pretentious and self-indulgent. Ultimately it's a matter of taste: if you like his style, you'll love this discomforting drama. Joan Blondell costars as the sardonic but confident playwright and longtime Cassavetes star Ben Gazarra is Rowland's smiling but pitiless manager. Cassavetes has a small role as her self-contained costar, keeping to himself until forced to deal with her onstage in a finale that is either an inspired ad-lib or the loopiest climax to a Broadway drama ever written. --Sean Axmaker
Damned good John Cassavetes' 1977 film Opening Night is, what critics usually call the work of such a significant artist, `overlooked'. It is an excellent film, in its own right, and one of the best portraits of a midlife crisis ever put to film. It's not a perfect film, in that, at two hours and twenty four minutes it's about a half hour too long, and there's a bit too much emphasis on the drunkenness of the lead character Myrtle Gordon, played by Gena Rowlands, the wife of Cassavetes, long after we've gotten the point. But only Woody Allen's masterpiece, Another Woman, which also starred Rowlands, eleven years later, is a better portrait of the internal conflicts of an aging woman. Yet, Rowlands did win the Best Actress Award at the Berlin Film Festival for this portrayal, and it was well deserved. Often this film, written by Cassavetes, is easily compared to his earlier- and inferior- film, A Woman Under The Influence, but it's a spurious comparison. Rowlands' character in that film is severely mentally disturbed from the start, as well as coming from a blue collar background, while her characters in this film and in Allen's film are both artists who are haunted by apparitions. In this film it's the ghost of a dead young woman who can be seen as Myrtle's younger doppelganger, while in Allen's film it's her character's own past.... Many critics have taken this film to be a portrait of an alcoholic, seeing Myrtle surround herself with enablers, such as a stage manager who tells her, during opening night, `I've seen alot of drunks in my time, but I've never seen anyone as drunk as you who could stand up. You're great!', but this is wrong, for alcohol isn't her problem- nor is her chain smoking. They are merely diversions from whatever thing is really compelling her to her own destruction, and much to Cassavetes' credit, as a storyteller, he never lets us find out exactly what's wrong with Myrtle, and despite her coming through in the end, there's no reason to expect that she has really resolved anything of consequence. This sort of end without resolution links Cassavetes directly with the more daring European directors of the recent past, who were comfortable in not revealing everything to an audience, and forcing their viewers to cogitate, even if it hurts. Yet, the film recapitulates perfectly the effect of a drunk or fever lifting out of the fog, and as such the viewer again is subliminally involved in its drama. Whether or not Myrtle Gordon does recover, after the film's universe irises about her is left for each and every viewer to decide, and as we have seen before that lid closes, one's choices do matter.
"I'm not acting" "Opening night" (1977), written and directed by John Cassavetes, is a strange and emotional film that will make an impact on you. This story shows a human being during a period of deep emotional turmoil, and professional confusion.
The main character is Myrtle Gordon (played by a wonderful Gena Rowlands),a famous actress that is unable to cop with the death of a young admirer, killed in an accident near her. As if that were enough, Myrtle is afraid of really playing her part in a new play, due to the fact that she is supposed to be a woman that is getting old, something that she knows is true in real life. How does Myrtle cope with her fear of aging, and her remorse for not being there for her fan? What if she feels she is not able to act anymore? Too many questions, and answers that can be found in this film.
On the whole, I can say that I really enjoyed "Opening night". Watching this movie is not easy, but once you finish it you realize why it is worthwhile to do so...
Belen Alcat
If you can, watch "Opening night" before "All about your mother", as Almodovar's movie was partly inspired on this film.
"An Actress Under the Influence." While I watching Opening Night, I was instantly reminded of Annette Benning's "Being Julia", a film with some similarities. It's certainly also a star showcase piece Gena Rowlands, who seems to deliver her best and most vulnerable performance under the direction of her late husband John Cassavetes. It's an elaborate "soap-operaish" drama about the reality of an aging stage Diva. Rowland's character once said," When I was 18, I could do anything...". She's on the verge of nervous breakdown, dued to her lack of self-esteem and confidence in starring in her new play. She doesn't feel comfortable playing the new role, because she worried that if she's convincing enough that her audiences would accept her for just being one kind of character. During the course of two days before the opening night, she gets into feuds with the playwright, director, and producer. She is haunted by the ghost of her youth, whom she couldn't let go of, and embrace her real age. Ultimately, she had to abuse alcohol and chain-smoking before going on stage. Perhaps that was the only way she could forget herself and get into character in order to deliver a mesmerizing performance. This is certainly one of Rowland's best performances of her career. This film also features some fine supporting performances.
Behind-the-scenes info for Cass buffs For a fascinating behind-the-scenes info about Opening Night and a list of books about Cassavetes' work, go to Ray Carney's website dedicated to John Cassavetes (found through any search engine).
The rebellion of the woman in the actress against the author Quite a strange film of actors playing actors' problems. It is not a masterpiece and yet it deals with an important problem in the acting profession. An actor or an actress must never play her own real life. In this case this actress is unable to play properly because she does not feel the part because it is her own life and she is afraid of having to face the fact that she is aging, that she is no longer 18 and that she is lonely in her life because she is haunted by this girl she used to be. So she has to learn how to cope with herself, with the ghost, with the past that will never come back. And she manages to cope but in the most hateful way : she gets drunk just before getting on the stage. That does not go very far, and it is hard to believe. It does not take you knowing hundred of actors to know that acting is very difficult when you are drunk, and this state is very visible, even with the best. But since we never see the play in full, only some small pieces, it does not matter really, though since we had seen some of these pieces being rehearsed, we know that the text was changed and the acting was not following the directing. In fact the most interesting character in the film is the old female playwright who is 65 and who hates actresses and actors because she cannot get any one to play what she is and what she feels, because the play is directly drawn from her own experience and there is no leeway anywhere to enable the actress to get off that muddy ground. The author is so personal that she glues the actress to the ground with her own mire. That film could have been a lot better if it had tried to get out of this narrow vision.
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