Word: mabel
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...tried to do the same thing when I interviewed Cassavetes. Steeped in the Harvard analytical tradition, I wanted him to "name" his movie, that is, I wanted him to take his portrait of Mabel Longhetti--a woman deemed mad by society because she was more loving than she was supposed to be--and place it in some kind of historical framework. It didn't work. The problem was that our minds worked differently; our mainsprings were as different as a housebroken canal and a frenzied torrent...
Kael is perfectly right in sensing that "he somehow thinks that Nick and Mabel really love each other and that A Woman Under the Influence is a tragic love story." Perhaps the crux of the movie is the scene where Mabel's husband, Nick, yields to outside pressures and agrees to commit her to a mental institution. Mabel tries to defend herself: "I always understood you and you always understood me--till death do us part, Nick...
...Mabel and Nick's world is a simple dichotomy: there are the two of them on one side and everyone else on the other. It is Nick's ambivalence, his teetering between loyalty to convention and loyalty to his "whack-o" wife that is the stuff of Cassavetes's tragedy...
...theories of schizophrenia expressed by R.D. Laing. Dispersed throughout the article are several particularly unusual phrases used by Kael in her review. One of Stephen's lines reads as follows: "[Gena Rowlands] moves from spasms of manic nervousness to chastened, hurt-animal despair..." Kael's review reads, "Mabel returns, chastened, a fearful hurt-animal look on her face." This is a common enough phrase, were it not followed later in Stephen's review by the Jine, "Mabel waits for the schoolbus to return with her kids, pacing like an anxious speed freak..." Kael writes: "...a big beautiful blonde in tight...
...admit that I consciously used some of Parllne Kael's descriptions of particular memonts in the movie. I read her piece about a week before beginning my own, and hold in mind the expression "handsome, grainy-cinema-verite" and the characterization of Mabel as a "chastened, hurt-animal" penitent and "anxious speed freak." By any ethical standards I should have given credit to the New Yorker review...