SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot.
An attempt to grapple with the mystery of John Cassavetes might usefully begin by noting that, at least during the director’s lifetime, both his supporters and detractors generally agreed on one thing: that no mystery existed. His best-known films were either admired or despised for their blatant transparency, for their tendency to present unmediated chunks of ‘real life’ without relying on explicitly cinematic effects.
Seen today, however, the films look far more formally ambitious, to the extent that there now exists an uncertainty as to how they should be approached. Whereas ‘realist’ works of the 1950s such as Delbert Mann’s Marty and Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront appeared hopelessly dated after a decade or two, Cassavetes’ 1970s masterpieces only fully revealed themselves once their cinéma vérité veneer was recognised not as a rejection of stylisation in pursuit of an unvarnished ‘truth’, but as a deliberate technique by which the filmmaker conveyed his concerns.
For Cassavetes, ‘acting’ was not just one of the raw materials out of which films are made but rather the embodiment of his obsessions with identity and the ways individuals relate to a wider community. Concepts of identity are presented as virtually indistinguishable from concepts of performance, and conflicts between extroverted improvisers and inert role-players (which appear in every Cassavetes film) signal a wider interest in how the self is revealed or concealed through performative interactions. Yet to achieve fully the ambitions of these opposed character types – either by completely retreating into a one-dimensional role or being totally liberated from the demands of moment-to-moment consistency – is to risk becoming unreal or ‘ghostly’. It’s a problem that lies at the heart of 1977’s Opening Night, the last of the five films Cassavetes financed personally, partly by asking his cast and crew to work for deferred salaries.
The film, perhaps conceived in response to Barbra Streisand’s expressed interest in having Cassavetes direct a remake of 1954’s A Star Is Born, features the director’s wife Gena Rowlands as Myrtle Gordon, a middle-aged actress starring in a Broadway play entitled The Second Woman. Incapable of following the playwright’s advice simply to ‘say the lines clearly’ – incapable, that is, of being merely a role-player – Myrtle decides to set aside the written text and improvise. The approving response of the onscreen spectators ironically resembles that of an audience that applauded an early cut of Opening Night. Ironically because, according to Cassavetes scholar Ray Carney, the director subsequently recut the final reels, removing all those moments that had been greeted with approbation. Predictably, the resulting film was a box-office flop.
This (possibly apocryphal) story suggests not a rejection of the traditional ways test screenings are used as a guide to final editing, but rather a parodic recreation of them, reversing the accepted touchstones of success or failure. And in the film itself Cassavetes’ usual emphasis on how our everyday ‘reality’ involves more or less concealed notions of performance is similarly rejected in favour of an investigation into that reality hidden beneath the surface of an actually (rather than metaphorically) theatrical world in which performance is considered the norm. For Myrtle, who complains that she has ‘lost the reality of the reality’, acting is less an abandonment of life than a way of dealing with it at one remove: a surface lie concealing a deeper truth.
Complicating all this is the presence of Nancy Stein (Laura Johnson), a young admirer of Myrtle’s who dies in a car accident and subsequently flits in and out of the narrative as a ghost. Whereas the images that directly follow the opening credits depict Myrtle as a transparent figure superimposed over a shot of a theatre audience, Nancy’s apparition is treated as concretely as anything else in the film and her overt function as a reminder of Myrtle’s youth is less striking than the ways her appearances problematise Cassavetes’ investigation into the connections between identity and performance. In her ghostly form, Nancy both embodies the dilemma confronting Myrtle and calls into question the cinematic terms in which that dilemma is presented: one striking moment has her demonstrate her ability to hear Bo Harwood’s background score (‘I like the music’). This evocation of an unchanging inner being – a ‘soul’ that can be freed from the limitations of the mortal self, which can only be revealed through performance – shows Cassavetes beginning to explore the Shakespearian themes that would come to the fore in the last film he wrote and directed, Love Streams, with its dream states, visionary revelations and supernatural occurrences.
Brad Stevens, Sight and Sound, July 2007
Lines between theatre and reality were blurred in Cassavetes to the point of being hopelessly and deliberately intertwined, a phenomenon only amplified by the sometime appearance of the two together. But it was Gena Rowlands who raged and prowled front and centre as a restless creature who was incapable of, unwilling to, resolve the contradictions of life; of the actor’s life. Did Cassavetes invent her or did he unleash her? This wild animal always battling personal demons; her characters challenging norms of behaviour, testing the limits of what an audience would accept.
This was particularly true of Opening Night, with its Pirandellian shifts and its two audiences: one in the theatre at New Haven, Connecticut, where Myrtle’s new play is in previews, the other where we moviegoers are subjected to her wild and unpredictable swings. But in Opening Night her discontent turns virulent. She dislikes the play, sabotages the production, questions lines, invents some. Myrtle scorns the theme of the ageing star – even as she herself worries that playing a menopausal woman, especially as she isn’t one yet, would put an end to her career. (This was something the real-life Rowlands needn’t have worried about: she was always working, both in film and television, and enjoyed one of the longest and richest careers of any contemporary actress.)
Finally, in the denouement, she staggers on to the stage late and drunk – and gets away with it, as some diabolical new version of reality is enacted between Cassavetes and herself. The fourth wall has long ago receded and, as they duke it out physically, we catch a sense of their unique and electrically
pugilistic bond.
Molly Haskell, Sight and Sound, October 2024
Opening Night
Director: John Cassavetes
©/Presented by: Faces Distribution Corporation
Made with the cooperation of: Pasadena Community Arts Center, Pasadena Community Services Commission, Inc., Cal-Neva Community Action Association
Executive Producer: Sam Shaw
Producer: Al Ruban
Assistant to the Producer: Sharon Van Ivan
Associate Producer: Michael Lally
Accounting: Susan Howell
Production Co-ordinator: Teresa Stokovic
Production Managers: Foster H. Phinney, Ed Ledding
Location Supervisor: Jack Krupnick
Secretaries: Arlene Harris, Michelle Hart
Production Assistants: Carol Roux, Robert Bogdanoff, Raymond Vellucci
Post-production [Secretary]: Kathleen Barker
2nd Assistant Director: Lisa Hallas
Script Supervisors: Tom Cornwell, Joanne T. Harwood
Casting: Prometheus Patient
Writer: John Cassavetes
Director of Photography: Al Ruban
Camera Operators: Frederick Elmes, Michael Ferris
Camera Assistants: Catherine Coulson, Jed Skillman
Gaffers: Donne Daniels, Joseph L. Rezwin, Donald Robinson, Richard Ross
Graphics/Still Photographer: Richard Upper
Editor: Tom Cornwell
Assistant Editors: Kent Beyda, Nancy Golden, Hal Bowers
Art Director: Bryan Ryman
Prop Man: Robert Vehon
Chief Set Construction: Verna Bagby
Assistant Set Construction: Abraham Zwick
Local 33 Stagehands: Pat Don Aroma, Larry Baughman
Local 33: Larry Dean, Dave Walker, Emmett O’Connell
Costume Designer: Alexandra Corwin-Hankin
Wardrobe Masters: Miles Ciletti, Charles Akins
Men’s Wardrobe by: Gangi of Rome
Colour by: MGM Labs
Composed Music: Bo Harwood
Arranged/Conducted Music: Booker T. Jones
Musical Consultant: Lee Housekeeper
Sound: Bo Harwood
Sound Assistant: Joanne T. Harwood
Boom Operator: Crew Chamberlin
Sound Mixer: Bill Varney
Re-recorded at: Goldwyn Studios
Sound Editor: Joe G. Woo Jr
Teacher/Welfare Worker: Adria Licklider
Location Equipment: Cinemobile
Appreciation to: Playboy Limousine, Colonel Sanders
Stunt Drivers: Victor Paul, Charles Picerni
Stunt Double: Donna Garrett
Publicists: Esme Chandlee, Eve Siegel
Cast
Gena Rowlands (Myrtle Gordon)
Ben Gazzara (Manny Victor)
John Cassavetes (Maurice Aarons)
Joan Blondell (Sarah Goode)
Paul Stewart (David Samuels)
Zohra Lampert (Dorothy Victor)
Laura Johnson (Nancy Stein)
John Tuell (Gus Simmons)
Ray Powers (Jimmy)
John Finnegan (prop man)
Louise Fitch (Kelly)
Fred Draper (Leo)
Katherine Cassavetes (Vivian)
Lady Rowlands (Melva Drake)
Carol Warren (Carla)
Briana Carver (Lena)
Angelo Grisanti (Charlie Spikes)
Meade Roberts (Eddie Stein)
Eleanor Zee (Sylvia Stein)
David Rowlands (doorman)
Sharon Van Ivan (Shirley)
Jimmy Christie (news stand operator)
James Karen (bell boy)
Jimmy Joyce (bartender)
Sherry Bain (bar maid)
Sylvia Davis Shaw (hotel maid)
Peter Lampert (maître d’)
Peter Falk, Peter Bogdanovich, Seymour Cassel, Tony Roberts (opening night congratulators)
USA 1977©
144 mins
Digital
The screening on Wed 27 May will be introduced by Katie McCabe, Reviews Editor at Sight and Sound
SIGHT AND SOUND
Never miss an issue with Sight and Sound, the BFI’s internationally renowned film magazine. Subscribe from just £25*
*Price based on a 6-month print subscription (UK only). More info: sightandsoundsubs.bfi.org.uk
BFI SOUTHBANK
Welcome to the home of great film and TV, with three cinemas and a studio, a world-class library, regular exhibitions and a pioneering Mediatheque with 1000s of free titles for you to explore. Browse special-edition merchandise in the BFI Shop.We're also pleased to offer you a unique new space, the BFI Riverfront – with unrivalled riverside views of Waterloo Bridge and beyond, a delicious seasonal menu, plus a stylish balcony bar for cocktails or special events. Come and enjoy a pre-cinema dinner or a drink on the balcony as the sun goes down.
BECOME A BFI MEMBER
Enjoy a great package of film benefits including priority booking at BFI Southbank and BFI Festivals. Join today at bfi.org.uk/join
BFI PLAYER
We are always open online on BFI Player where you can watch the best new, cult & classic cinema on demand. Showcasing hand-picked landmark British and independent titles, films are available to watch in three distinct ways: Subscription, Rentals & Free to view.
See something different today on player.bfi.org.uk
Join the BFI mailing list for regular programme updates. Not yet registered? Create a new account at www.bfi.org.uk/signup
Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email