A Woman Under the Influence

Living with Cassavetes must have been a bitch.

I just watched the Criterion Collection DVD of "A Woman Under the Influence," and then I listened to the audio interview conducted by a couple of French guys with accents and the worse sound-recording set up I've ever suffered through.

Cassavetes' take on his movie is that "under the influence" means that women, after a few years of marriage, come under the influence of their husbands; that Mabel is not crazy, she's socially inept; and that Nick was wrong to have her committed. Cassavetes' comments on men and women are shocking today, and I looked at the years mentioned on the DVD. "A Woman Under the Influence" was released in 1974, and the interview was done in 1975, after the film's successful release by a distributor.

John Cassavetes was a brilliant guy (he died in 1989 at the age of 60). He was a great actor, and he turned into a brilliant director who wrote and filmed his own scripts. He was married to Gena Rowlands, who played Mabel, from 1954 until he died.

In the mid-seventies, women's lib was just taking hold. Cassavetes was raised in the Thirties and Forties, and became a working adult in the Fifties, the decade all those women's lib books were written about, when women were oppressed housewives and mothers. And here Cassavetes is in 1975 saying married women were under the influence of their husbands. The title means Mabel is under the influence of Nick (played by Peter Falk), under his protection, under his control, he's the man of the house, and he's the one who tells her what to do, how to act, and Mabel verbalizes it throughout the film: "Just tell me how you want me to act," Mabel says several times. Nick not only tells her, he screams at her and slaps her down a few times. Then he says, "Just be yourself!" It's a brutal film about the relationship between Nick and Mabel.

Because Cassavetes wrote the screenplay and directed "A Woman Under the Influence," I give some credence to his commentary about the movie, but I don't necessarily believe what he says. I'm sure he means what he says, but I don't necessarily believe it's true. Cassavetes' films are works of art, and in all works of art, the creator puts himself into the work. The creator's subconscious is in there as well as his or her conscious. So I take it upon myself to presume there's more in "A Woman Under the Influence" than its creator knows and understands - we don't know and understand ourselves completely, and others may have insights into our psyches that we miss and can't see.

I also think that as an artist, Cassavetes was not the best in his craftsmanship. His movies are replete with mike booms in the frame, out of focus shots, faces not quite in the frame, and so on. I also think Cassavetes' scripts are emotional outpourings and not necessarily accurate portrayals of details of, say, insanity. So when Cassavetes wrote the script, I don't think he knew anything more about insanity than the rest of us. But he knew Mabel and he poured himself into her. In the interview, Cassavetes says he wrote the part for Gena, so there may be some of his understanding of and feelings for his wife in that role.

So although Cassavetes may say that Mabel is socially inept and not crazy, I'm willing to think he may be wrong. I look at Mabel's behavior, and I wonder if she has a borderline personality disorder. I wonder _what_ her problem is, but I definitely think she's not under the bell-shaped curve of normal. While Cassavetes may have written the script with the idea in mind that she's socially inept, what he really got on the screen is a woman whose behavior is definitely outside the realm of the norm. What I saw in the movie is a woman who desperately needs help and can't get it. (The most heartbreaking scene for me was when Nick was verbally abusing her and Mabel asked her father to stand up for her. The schmuck stood up and said he didn't understand why he should stand up.)

Mabel, to me, was a person in need of support who wasn't getting it. She wanted to know what her husband wanted, and his answer was to scream, "Be yourself!" Because Cassavetes didn't have the expertise to deal realistically with mental illness, we don't get a good understanding of exactly what Mabel's issues are, but we know her relationship with Nick is abusive. I saw Nick as sicker than Mabel, unable to relate to her as a person. His job comes first (he's on call 24 hours a day it seems, and he always goes when he's called), his friends come first (after working a 24-hour shift, he brings a dozen guys over unannounced for breakfast at seven in the morning), his mother comes first (oy vey - too much to mention). (One of the things to think about in this movie is that Gena Rowlands' mother was cast as Mabel's mother and Cassavetes' mother was cast as Nick's mother.)

Because I assume Cassavetes was writing and creating the movie from within himself, I have to wonder what it was like for Gena Rowlands to be married to him. Cassavetes clearly believed that wives were under the influence of their husbands, that the man was in control of the marriage. There Nick is slapping Mabel several times to get her under his control, yelling at her, and generally abusing her emotionally and physically, and the movie is called "A _Woman_ Under the Influence."

In the interview, Cassavetes says that Nick was wrong to have Mabel committed. Mabel isn't crazy. Her behavior isn't exactly socially acceptable, but that's because she's socially inept. At the end of the movie, Mabel comes home from the insane asylum, there's a homecoming party that falls into a shambles of accusations and yelling, Nick and Mabel have a physical fight with their three children screaming and trying to drag them apart, and Cassavetes says the movie has a happy ending because as they're preparing to go to bed the phone rings and Nick doesn't answer it. It's either his job or his mother, and Nick lets it ring as Mabel and he get ready for bed. That's a happy ending for Cassavetes. Oy vey again.

Oh. About the movie. Rowlands gives a towering performance as Mabel. Gena Rowlands is an actress I've seen in many films, and she's among a very few whom I rank as the best actresses of the 20th Century. Peter Falk is superb as Nick. He's another incredible actor probably better known now as the bumbling Columbo on that TV show. Cassavetes knew how to cast. Katherine Cassavetes was very good as Nick's mother; a cold bitch in control of her son and in hatred of her daughter-in-law. As Margaret Longhetti, Katherine manipulated Nick physically as well as emotionally, grabbing his suit and manhandling him as she screamed at him that Mabel was insane and not a fit mother for Nick's children.

I've described the plot loosely, and many will find the film difficult to watch. Life for Nick and Mabel is harrowing, and it's worse for their three children. It's all about watching Nick and Mabel spiral out of control and then back together - but the spiral is downhill all the way, even as they get back together. Our only hope is that their relationship will become more personal as Nick lets go the outside world that's been keeping them separated. I see Nick as the real problem in the marriage, and my hope is that he realized he screwed up and that he lets his love for her control him more.

Many of the actors are not superb, of course - it's a Cassavetes film and people worked for a promise of pay if the film made money. The interviewer asked Cassavetes about using amateurs, and Cassavetes said he didn't know what an amateur was. If they were in his movie, he considered them professional - then he laughed - except they didn't get paid, he said. This is the technical definition of amateur, by the way - doing something for the love of it, which his cast and crew definitely did. (Amateur is from the French "amator," lover.) If you look at the casts in Cassavetes' movies, you'll see a lot of them repeat, and maybe their children playing children in the movie. Cassavetes used whoever he could get, keeping in mind that he funded his movies pretty much out of his own pocket. The film has rough edges, but the movie is gripping and terribly real.