..

OPENING NIGHT
From John Cassavetes: Five Films

Review by Ed Nguyen

Stars: Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, John Cassavetes, Joan Blondell
Director: John Cassavetes
Audio: English monaural
Subtitles: English
Video: Color, widescreen 1.85:1
Studio: Criterion
Features: Interviews, trailers
Length: 144 minutes
Release Date: September 21, 2004

“You’re not a woman to me anymore.  You’re a professional.”

Film *** ½

One of the most remarkable movie couples in American cinema has always been that of director John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.  Cassavetes first met his future wife during the early 1950’s, marrying her shortly thereafter.  It was a marriage that would endure until Cassavetes’ death in 1989 and would encompass many films together.  Usually in these films, Cassavetes occupied the role of director with his wife in a lead or major role.  Such was the case with A Woman Under the Influence, perhaps the couple’s most successful film, but Rowlands would follow up that film's performance with another, equally-superb performance in Opening Night (1977) opposite her true-life husband.

Opening Night is a backstage drama that traces the destructive trail of an insecure stage actress unable to come to gripes with her gradual aging.  The desire to be remain young, or at least to become desirable again, had been broached previously in Cassavetes' Faces and implied in A Woman Under the Influence.  However, in Opening Night, this theme forms the central crisis for the lead character.  Rowlands portrays Myrtle, the star attraction in The Second Woman, a play being fine-tuned in New Haven before its Broadway premiere.  The subject of the play is a woman who, in growing older, becomes less alluring to men.  It is a theme which hits too close to reality for Myrtle, who has difficulty accepting the role as it is written and secretly fears that she will come to the same fate as the play’s aging heroine: “I’m looking for a way to play this part where age doesn’t make a difference.”  Myrtle rationalizes that if she plays the part, as it is written, too well, then she may be forevermore typecast in older roles, thereby ending her stage career in her own eyes.

As a result, Myrtle exhibits a great degree of passive-aggressive behavior, continuously changing her lines, throwing tantrums, or altering the overall tone of the play to the chagrin of the playwright Sarah (Joan Blondell).  Under Myrtle's fine-tuning, the play becomes less of a serious drama than an improvisational comedy.  Myrtle’s reluctance to play the role straight leads to inevitable friction between Myrtle and not only Sarah but also the director, Manny (Ben Gazzara), and Myrtle's opposite in the play, Maurice (John Cassavetes).

The casting of Joan Blondell as the old playwright was a stroke of genius.  Blondell, once a 1930’s sex symbol herself, offers a strong counterpoint to the Rowlands character’s fear of aging and becoming ordinary.  Blondell’s character has accepted her maturity and has aged gracefully, finding alternate means of expression and self-relevance through her writing.  Sarah is thus an example of what Myrtle is not - a woman secured with herself and her accomplishments in life.

Myrtle’s relationship with these central figures in her life is increasingly strained by her uneven performances.  In addition, she is further shaken after witnessing the accidental death of a young, devoted fan, Nancy.  Her death haunts Myrtle throughout the film, and Myrtle even begins to (perhaps) hallucinate Nancy’s subsequent ghostly appearances.  Possibly, Nancy represents a youthful ideal to Myrtle or perhaps she represents an image of Myrtle as she still imagines herself.  Interestingly, the first appearance of Nancy's apparition is as a reflection of Myrtle within a dressing room mirror (the secondary supernatural elements of the storyline were an unusual touch for Cassavetes in his films).

Myrtle's true problem, however, may be more ominous.  In truth, Myrtle is somewhat of an alcoholic.  It is a character flaw which is never directly addressed in the film yet whose signs are undeniable.  Myrtle is often seen sipping wine or drinking after performances.  She protests that her concerns over aging have caused her to drink more, but perhaps her drinking has actually caused her to worry more irrationally.

In this light, Myrtle's insecurities are a disguise for her greater problem at hand, one which her colleagues choose to ignore or dismiss. They even humor her attempts to rationalize her behavior.  The young fan’s appearances, rather than being considered probably hallucinations, are taken at face value, and Sarah even sends Myrtle to see a couple of mediums to help exorcise the apparition.  Maurice, though initially resistant to Myrtle's attempts to sabotage the play, ultimately relents and joins her in a third act improvisation during the opening night that negates any serious contention in the play.  Only the director Manny shows some resolve in the end - when Myrtle shows up late and extremely drunk for the opening night, Manny forces her regardless to crawl to her dressing room and prepare for the night's performance.  If Myrtle is to redeem herself, she will have to do so in front of a live audience, where she must face down her personal demons or fail and bring her acting career to a crashing halt.

In her own way, Rowland's Myrtle, like her Mabel from A Woman Under the Influence, is mad.  She clearly cannot differentiate between reality and stage, life versus art.  “I seem to have lost the reality of…reality,” she confesses at one point.  Myrtle is like a Method actress who has taken her craft too far and can no longer distinguish between her true self and her stage role.  Alcoholism may be at the root of her mid-life crisis, but it has spawned a great many more problems, too.

The film ends with an extended sequence that covers, appropriately enough, the play’s opening night on Broadway.  Myrtle’s problems have by now bubbled to the surface, and the success or failure of the play now rests entirely on her ability to overcome her insecurities and to produce a meaningful performance.

Whether or not Myrtle succeeds is in the eye of the beholder.  Myrtle does manage an passable performance, but is it a performance that has remained true to the spirit of the play's original intent or to Myrtle's own manipulations?  For that matter, has Myrtle resolved anything by the film's conclusion, or has she succumbed to her own insecurities?  In the final equation, perhaps the conclusion to Opening Night touches upon a very familiar theme in Cassavetes' works - that everyone wears a mask and that all outwardly emotions are not always as they seem.

Video ****

Opening Night is presented in a widescreen format with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio and appears quite marvelous.  Colors are crisp with good details, and contrast levels are strong.  The print itself looks nearly pristine and benefits from a virtually flawless transfer.

Audio ***

Opening Night is presented in a monophonic soundtrack.  The audio quality is not especially dynamic but functions quite adequately within the context of this dialogue-driven film.

Features ** ½

There are three interview pieces on this DVD.  The first interview (22 min.) is with Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara.  The actors discuss improvisation which occurred in Opening Night as well as humorous anecdotes involving Joan Blondell or the theater audience scenes or even John Cassavetes himself as a director and a person.  They reveal that the play's final scene was mostly improvised before the large theater audience, so the laughs encountered on the soundtrack are genuine.

In the second interview (8 min.), Al Ruban, the director of photography and producer, talks about how he became involved with Opening Night as well as some of his frustrations during the production.  Ruban also discusses the film's distribution difficulties (Opening Night only ran for a couple of weeks in America and has rarely been screened since its original release).

The final interview is an audio-only segment between Cassavetes and Michel Ciment.  It is sub-divided into five segments which include discussions of the play within the film, cinema vs. theater, the Gena Rowlands role, and the film's final scene.

Lastly, there are two trailers for Opening Night.

BONUS TRIVIA:  In a nod to another superb backstage drama, All About Eve, Joan Blondell’s role had been originally offered to Bette Davis.

Summary: