A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
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A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
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Filmmaking genius or fraud provocateur? The work of John Cassavetes has been the subject of unending adoration and extensive dissection ever since the actor picked up a camera in NYC in the late ‘50s and joined the likes of Jonas Mekas and Shirley Clarke in the burgeoning independent film scene. Almost instantly, he became a cult figure to cinephiles in the know, and while he would go on to make some films for the major studios, his housewife-on-the-edge vehicle for his wife Gena Rowlands could garner no interest from a single studio or distributor. After eventually self-funding, the film would instead go on to be Cassavetes’s biggest hit, an oscar nominee, and a film forever in the critical pantheon.
On this episode, we discuss the film’s loudest naysayer, Pauline Kael, and why the Cassavetes style remains divisive. We also discuss what his imitators get right and get wrong, second-wave feminism, and what the film itself says about the experience of women in the nuclear family.
Next week: Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) by Jacques Rivette
UnauthorizedPod.com for more. Hosted by Zachary Domes and J Brooks Young. Music by hetchy