So while I often put together reviews for movies posted on
my blog, I keep a channel that shows movies from different eras considered a
bit arty and Cinéma vérité on in the
background, that I caught by accident on Direct tv not too long ago (because I
love it, Contempt was on and surprised me because unless it is Turner Classics
or Sundance, a movie such as this just doesn’t come on a lot) called Cinemoi. I
just mention this because from time to time I might mention a few movies I
watch on the channel. In the case of Sunday night (I had watched a little bit
of this Saturday late night), Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970) was on and as I was
putting together my review for Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, I
took a fresh look at it.
I have loved certain Cassavetes’ movies that I had
seen (Woman Under the Influence, Faces, & Minnie and Moskowitz), but
Husbands, while I get that these are men trying to figure out what the hell has
happened to them and terrified of the mundane of suburban existence after the depressing funeral of a dead buddy, just doesn’t
hold anything of true value for me. Ben Gazzara (Killing of a Chinese Bookie is
a film I have watched a little bit of; I did enjoy his Peter Bogdanovich film,
Saint Jack) is unstable and volatile; his scene involving the mean mistreatment
of a wife and mother-in-law after a night of binge drinking with fellow pals,
Cassavetes and Peter Falk, was hard for me to watch. There’s a prolonged bar
scene where the three have a singing *competition* with other barflies lounging
around, totally snockered and inebriated that goes on and on and on. It kind of
reminded me of the wedding ceremony in Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, that for a
while has a novel value, wringed for all its worth after thirty minutes. I just
didn’t like Gazzara in the least, so spending a lot of time with him was like
pulling teeth. Leaving that guy back in London was probably the best thing that
could happen for Cassavetes and Falk. Yeah, Gazzara, after his row with the
wife, decides to head off to London, all spur of the moment, and his pals take
off with him, knowing that perhaps some scolding will be waiting on return.
Watching it, I was amazed at just how much of Cassavetes’ style of camerawork,
the way action and actors are captured, is utilized in movies and, especially,
television today. I’m curious as to what Cassavetes might have done in the
cheaper digital age of filmmaking. I guess people will laugh that I would write about Cassavetes and mention him in the same breath as a Friday the 13th film, but to tell you the truth, I won't be boxed into a corner. This blog is my own beast, and it will be fashioned in whatever form I see fit.
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