Other Titles • A Woman Under the Influence • Frau unter Einfluß, Eine (1974) • Moglie, Una (1974)
Synopses for A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
1.
John Cassavetes’s A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE is an extraordinarily powerful drama about a California housewife's mental disintegration. Mabel Longhetti (Gena Rowlands), wife of Nick Longhetti (Cassavetes regular and COLUMBO star Peter Falk), has no emotional or creative outlets, putting her entire being into her family. She spends her days waiting for Nick to return from work and her children from school. This dependence begins to take a toll, and Mabel has a nervous breakdown that forces her to spend time in a mental hospital; meanwhile, Nick struggles to keep the family together. Devastatingly, when she returns six months later, a welcome-home party threatens to trigger another collapse. As the confused, overwhelmed Mabel, Rowlands delivers one of the most grueling performances ever committed to celluloid, which also stands as a tribute to her real-life husband Cassavetes's insistence on getting to the inner core of his characters’ emotional states. Falk portrays Nick with a harsh yet delicate pathos that is also honest and moving. A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE is a truly groundbreaking and original film from a maverick American director; both he and Rowlands were nominated for Oscars for their respective roles.
2.
Cassavetes gives us experiences as complex, demanding, and intense as life itself. Most films tell us what to know and feel, what things mean. The result is a slight but decisive abstraction from everything in them. These movies are about an experience, rather than giving us the experience itself. Rather than plunging us headlong into life, these movies tell us about life-the way reading an essay about an experience is entirely different from having the experince. Cassavetes takes away the aboutness, the abstraction. To watch one of his movies is not to learn about a group of characters and situations, but to have something very close to the kind of experiences we would have if we were actually in similar situations with similar figures.
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