Nothing matters, man: re-watching Cassavetes
So yeah, I’m back on Medium to say a few words about stuff that isn’t music, or books or other random matters. Or rather, it is about something random: John Cassavetes’ films. Specifically, my watching (re-watching) five of his films during the last five consecutive nights. Yep, this heroic feat has indeed been performed by yours truly — Shadows on Friday, Faces on Saturday, A Woman Under The Influence on Sunday, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie on Monday, and Opening Night last night. And now, of course, I’ve got to write something about this extraordinary cinematic exercise. Er, yes. Well, I’m hardly much of a film critic but I like Cassavetes’ stuff and watching them back-to-back like this definitely made an impression. Here are some of my not-so-very-penetrating observations:
*They’re full of bitter and/or damaged, deeply unhappy people. The more they laugh, the more unhappy they are (Faces in particular)
*The camera angles accentuate the “off-centredness” of people’s emotional states (especially Shadows and Faces), and a lot of the framing is tight (sometimes incredibly close to faces/sides of their heads etc)
*There are also a lot of scenes where the camera chases people through rooms (usually as they’re chasing someone and shouting), which creates a lot of tension and stress
*Some of the sound (especially in the earlier films) is “off”, with people being heard almost as if they’re in a different room — for me, this makes the scenes more hauntingly powerful
*There’s a lot of drinking (usually whisky gulped down suicidally) and a truly tremendous amount of smoking
*Music is important: the opera on the soundtrack (and which the characters occasionally sing snatches of) in A Woman Under The Influence, the jazz and rock ’n’ roll in Shadows, the bitter-sweet cabaret songs in The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie
*They all have some beautifully shot city-at-night scenes, mostly in bars
*They’re multicultural — the work crew in A Woman Under The Influence (including the “goddamned Mexican-Indian” who smokes with a cigarette-holder), the central Black characters in Shadows, the Italian-Americans in The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (not to mention the Chinese gangsters in this film’s Chinatown in LA)
*There’s a kind of desperate tenderness between people which is probably the deeper point of Cassavetes’ films and even his entire creative outlook
Yes, OK, I’m generalising like mad here. It’s not easy to sum up five different films made across 20 years. Why bother, then? — you might ask. Yeah, it’s sort of pointless but the films (like any genuinely good ones) linger in the memory so strongly that it’s kind of interesting to blog about them soon afterwards. Right, so there you have it. What else? A lot of talking. Enormous amounts, in fact. Evidently, Cassavetes encouraged improvisation as well as doing a lot of in-depth character development stuff with his regular actors. If so, it really works. There’s more authentic (messy, non-flashy, normal-sounding) dialogue in these five films than in dozens (probably hundreds) of more commercial films from this era (1959–1977). When Peter Falk’s Nick in A Woman Under The Influence starts riffing over their spaghetti breakfast-cum-lunch about there being “a lot more kids in the neighbourhood” it sounds authentic because it’s so pointless and repetitive (just talk). Five minutes later Falk is shouting at his wife (Gena Rowlands) “to get your ass down” (sit back down) in front of a whole gang of his workmates and there’s an excruciating scene of embarrassed silence. Talk and silence.
Hmm. I should write the definitive Cassavetes book. (I will. Look out for it). Anyway, these films are great films. About deeply troubled people because … er, that’s life. When Fred the middle-aged carouser in Faces says to his fellow fifty-something philanderer Richard, “Oh, Dicky, do you remember when we didn’t have to worry about our wives and kids?”, he’s blurting out an emotional truth. He’s playing the fool (competitively) for the favours of the (also no-longer-young) Jeannie, but he’s clearly on some kind of downward spiral. In fact, in this film pretty much everyone — including the middle-aged wives who have their own “ladies’ night out” and end up with a sort of hustler-hippy male prostitute, played by the slightly sinister Seymour Cassel (“nothing matters, man”) — is on a downward spiral. I could go on (but I won’t). Or not too much. Middle-age crises abound in Cassavetes (Shadows even has late-youth crises as well). Opening Night hinges on the fighting-lost-youth theme almost entirely, but also has plenty to say about fame and acting itself. The final section of this film surely portrays the collective anxiety of putting on a theatrical production as well as any film ever has. Nothing matters, man. In the end, the nihilism of Seymour Cassel’s Chet in Faces is surely the exact opposite of what these films are trying to say (presuming that a film is ever saying anything). Cassavetes’ films in this little quintet seem to show people trying (with varying degrees of belief) to fight their own self-destructiveness and inner nihilism. In The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie, Ben Gazzara as Cosmo Vitelli gives a mini-speech in the dressing room of his Sunset Strip girlie-show club declaring that the only people who are happy are “the people who are comfortable”. Sounds almost like a manifesto. But then again, maybe it’s extreme wishful thinking: he’s deep in debt, is suffering from a bullet wound (he has a bullet still in his body), and is wanted by the mafia and by the police. His troubled life is basically finished—he’s definitely not comfortable. OK, show’s over (as Vitelli would say). End of my Cassavetes blog. With my usual arbitrariness, the only reason I’ve actually written about these five Cassavetes films is that they’re the five currently available on the BFI Subscription service. So no Husbands, Minnie And Moskowitz etc for me to ramble on about.
Before I go I’m tempted to quickly rhapsodise over the pleasure of seeing Cassavetes’ ensemble of loyal actors popping up in minor (but often amazingly distinctive) roles in different films, but … I won’t. Instead, final point: never in a series of films have I seen so much pockmarked skin. Numerous characters have horribly cratered faces, and acne is abundant — from Ben Carruthers’ punkish Ben in Shadows, the wives failing to hide their pimples with makeup in Faces, or the scary mafia boss (Morgan Woodward) seen in uncomfortable close-up in The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie. By contrast, there are actors — Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara with his Sicilian heritage — whose skin glistens or glows. We’re looking at their faces for what seems like an eternity. We’re sort of waiting for their inner deformity to show itself.
