Cast

Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, Matthew Cassel, Matthew Laborteaux, Christina Grisanti, Katherine Cassavetes, Lady Rowlands, Fred Draper, O. G. Dunn, Mario Gallo, Eddie Shaw

awards

Golden Globes 1975 – best actress, San Sebastián IFF 1975 – Silver Seashell, best actress, National Board of Review Award 1974 – best actress, Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards 1976 – best actress

Film description

A Woman Under the Influence was an instant hit, the only profitable Cassavetes’ film and his top award-winner. It confirmed Gena Rowlands’ status as an actress and best embodiment of Cassavetes’ ideas. The film – and this surprised even the director, was read as a kind of manifesto, a statement of the plight of American women.

In the film, Marbel and Nick Longhetti, together with their three kids, live in the Los Angeles suburbs. Marbel is a housewife: she cooks, cleans, and takes care of the children. Still, she is no ordinary woman. Marbel perceives the world differently, in a very intense way, as if deprived of any filter, which often embarrasses her family. Nick loves his wife, but is unable to accept her completely. In a moment of weakness, he commits her to a mental institution.

In interviews, Cassavetes stresses that the idea for the movie came to his mind when he was forced to stay at home and take care of the children. He realized what it meant for women to subjugate their ambitions and career for the family. But I didn’t have to think into the future of when I’d get older or when my attractiveness would fade or when the kids would grow up or when the baby would cease to cling to you. All those things are more interesting than what they’re making movies out of, claimed Cassavetes. (Michael Ventura, Cassavetes: Show Me the Magic, ‘L.A. Weekly’ 8/20–26/82).

Elżbieta Durys