Quest Status: 749 / 1000
TSPDT Rank #463
Many of John Cassavetes' films focus on relationships coming to a head, often with explosive improvised fights between couples or friends. Opening Night is one of his first films to focus in specifically on a single character, Gena Rowland's frighteningly unhinged theater star Myrtle Gordon. Cassavetes himself plays a smaller (but pivotal) role as one of Gordon's fellow actors, with whom Myrtle shares a scene that she feels is particularly humiliating, giving the two actors' past romantic relationship. Ben Gazzara and Joan Blondell both also have meaty roles which entail butting heads with Rowlands in almost every scene they're in.
These relationships are not the main focus though. Myrtle has far worse problems, mainly provoked by the death of an obsessive fan after a show, but also because she has to grapple with aging and failed romance in the play - two issues that she doesn't know how to express on stage. But to say that Opening Night is about the pressures of being an aging actress is like describing A Woman Under the Influence as a film about mental illness. Cassavetes doesn't so much probe his subjects as he does slit them open with a jagged hunting knife and let them bleed out for the audience to see. Myrtle's alcoholic meltdowns verge on the schizophrenic, but the people around her hope against hope that these inner demons will eventually produce a great performance - resulting in a baffling grand finale that holds a mirror up to reality in a way that's pure Cassavetes.
--- 251 films remaining ---
NOTE
This review is part of my new Tumblr blog Cinema Cycles, which can be found here.
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