Written by Rachael Johnson.
It was announced earlier this week that the Los Angeles Film Critics Association is to honor Gena Rowlands with its 2014 Career Achievement Award. Long overdue, no doubt, but perhaps the well-deserved attention will encourage people to revisit her impressive work. Most associated with the films she did with her husband, the ground-breaking independent director, John Cassavetes, Rowlands is an exceptionally talented and courageous actor. I must admit that I did not fully appreciate her talent until I experienced her extraordinary turn in A Woman Under The Influence. It’s not only Rowland’s finest performance; it is, unquestionably, one of the greatest cinematic performances of all time.
Both written and directed by Cassavetes, A Woman Under The Influence deals with non-conformity, mental illness, and the family. It’s also a considerably sympathetic examination of the socio-cultural role of women. Rowlands plays Mabel Longhetti, a mother of three young children, and wife to construction worker, Nick (played by Peter Falk). Mabel is a lively, spontaneous, somewhat charismatic woman, but it is clear from the very start, that she is psychologically unstable. She is feverish performing the most ordinary of tasks, such as getting the kids ready to visit their grandmother, or preparing pasta for her husband’s co-workers. Cassavetes seems to indicate that Mabel’s mental illness is an extreme form of non-conformity; her unrestrained behavior includes flirting with one of her husband’s co-workers directly in front of him. Although an uninhibited soul, Mabel is a deeply vulnerable woman who is consumed by her role as a wife, and mother. She wants to make everything right, but it is all too much. Perhaps she also feels that she has lost her very self. Her husband is characterized as a loving, traditionally masculine type who often responds to his wife’s extroverted ways, and unstable behaviour with frustration, and, sometimes, aggression. Mabel is, eventually, hospitalized for six months, and we see Nick struggle to perform his paternal role. In that it recognizes that that Mabel’s condition has both a psychological and social source, A Woman Under The Influence manifests a certain feminist awareness.
Rowland flawlessly channels Mabel’s open and exposed self, as well as her extraordinary intensity. She mines all aspects of her character, and deeply empathizes with her condition. Although she plays a woman whose condition issues from self-consciousness, specifically self-alienation, it is not a self-conscious performance. There are no gimmicks or false notes. Rowlands fully inhabits the role. She is, simply, Mabel, in all her complexity.
Unlike most American movies, A Woman Under The Influence does not romanticize non-conformity and mental illness. Cassavetes’s masterpiece is worlds apart from the likes of A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Frankly, it makes those films look totally fake. Unlike most Hollywood movies, it, equally, does not paint a sanitized portrait of the nuclear family. Cinematic depictions of struggling parents and young children are often unduly sentimental and exploitative but Cassavetes never falls into that trap. Although the family’s often heart-breaking story is sympathetically told, the director does not manipulate his viewers. Nor does he sugarcoat the bad stuff. He completely immerses us in the life of the family. We literally live with them. The nuclear family is vividly, and accurately, characterized as a psychic, and literal site of love, want, humor, hate, and sickness. Very few films about the domestic space have so effectively captured its unceasing tensions, and complexities. Note too that Cassavetes never judges his characters. He portrays their intimate, authentic selves. Contemporary audiences may also find the socio-cultural setting unusual too: A Woman Under The Influence is an American film about a working-class family.
A Woman Under The Influence is Cassavetes’s most powerful, and greatest film. Peter Falk’s naturalistic, and vivid portrayal of Nick should also be acknowledged but it is Gena Rowlands’s performance that stands out. It is up there with Brando in On The Waterfront, Streep in Sophie’s Choice, and de Niro in Raging Bull. In short, it is a performance for the ages.