Word: glorias
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...been skimming money off the top and is now understandably panicked, for he has been caught. There are men downstairs, strangers--this much he knows from his wife. In all probability these men have come to kill him and his whole family. Suddenly, the doorbell rings--it is Gloria, the next-door neighbor, who has run out of coffee. The accountant, who has run out of time, gives her instead his son, and a ledger. Gloria goes back to her apartment with the boy, and the Mob comes and murders the accountant, his wife, and his daughter...
...SHORT, Gloria is a sappy PG movie about a gun moll with a heart of gold--a two-hour meditation on a cliche. There is very little more than that: something, perhaps, like "love wins in the end," "little people can beat the system," or "women can beat men at their won game." There are all sorts of self-conscious messages in Gloria, tacked on like flyers on a kiosk. All of them are upbeat; isn't that what people want...
There, in a way, you have Gloria, and the mentality, real or imagined, that produced it. Add the cast, distinguished only by their lack of distinction, and you have a recipe for disaster. Cassavetes built his directorial reputation on the way he worked with actors, and particularly on his creative use of improvisation. But the liabilities of letting bad actors improvise are obvious. It's sort of like building a zoo without walls--you end up with shit all over the place...
...Rowlands is a terrific-looking woman who has aged like a fine piece of furniture: even the scratches and weather-warps are marks of character. Cassavetes' camera has found a fit object of veneration, a great movie-star face that, in motion or repose, commands attention. In Gloria, Rowlands obviously has a lot of fun playing the hard-boiled momma. She hunches her shoulders, narrows her eyes, breathes through her teeth, slaps her hand on her thigh and spits out lines like "I don't like kids. I hate kids. Especially your kids," and "I'll kill...
Rowlands' young costar, John Adames, was all of seven when Gloria was filmed. But even now he possesses the dark good looks of a gnome gigolo. His mannerisms seem as if the director might have bought them at a movie-memorabilia shop: gestures from Cagney, a voice as wispy as Peter Lorre's, sardonic smiles from the early John Cassavetes. But they are perfectly suitable to the slapdash style and gravelly tone of a film that uses Method acting to conceal, and then reveal, the workings of a soft old Hollywood heart...