Word: gena
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...LATEST movie. A Woman Under the Influence, director John Cassavetes shows schizophrenic pressures at work on a blue-collar wife in her tacky Los Angeles neighborhood. Cassavetes doesn't moralize about the ultimate "causes" for why Mabel Longhetti (Gena Rowlands) is, in her own words, "going whacke." But we use it encouraged by the insensitivity and aggressive self-assertion of her husband Nick (Peter Falk), by the claustrophobia created by relatives and by the family's tiny apartment, and Mabel's failure to find meaning in her life beyond her children...
...Gena Rowlands, who is Cassavetes's wife, dominates this uneven film. Her insanity really is a manifold personality: she moves from spasms of manic nervousness to chastened, hurt-animal despair, her foolish smiles rapidly become agonized searchings for approval. The director's over-long focuses on individual actors and his willingness to let them improvise, which made Husbands so tedious, here allows Rowlands at least to show everything she can do. Despite the prodigious exposure, she can't be gotten used to the way, say Susannah York could, in her portrait of madness in Images...
...Second Avenue on Broadway. Last summer Falk completed a film directed by May, Mikey and Nicky, in which he co-stars with Cassavetes. He has also helped to finance a new Cassavetes-directed film, Women Under the Influence, in which he co-stars with Cassavetes' wife, Actress Gena Rowlands...
...more atavistic than human way, but he is too much a part of the oppression to remove himself from it. Matthau's commentary as he watches the same dog take a leak on the same fire hydrant day after day is perhaps the high point of the film. Gena Rowlands is Douglas's consort, and is strong and convincing in a small role. Channel 3, unfortunately...
MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ. A love story by John Cassavetes, poignant and sometimes hilarious, with stunning performances by Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel...