Details by Film
Shadows
Streaming Options
Faces
Streaming Options
A Woman Under the Influence
Streaming Options
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Streaming Options
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Streaming Options
Opening Night
Streaming Options
Shadows
John Cassavetes’s directorial debut revolves around a romance in New York City between Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), a light- skinned black woman, and Tony (Anthony Ray), a white man. The relationship is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh (Hugh Hurd), and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was. Shot on location in Manhattan with a mostly nonprofessional cast and crew, Shadows is a penetrating work that is widely considered the forerunner of the American independent film movement.
Faces
John Cassavetes puts a disintegrating marriage under the microscope in the searing Faces. Shot in high-contrast 16 mm black and white, the film follows the futile attempts of the captain of industry Richard (John Marley) and his wife, Maria (Lynn Carlin), to escape the anguish of their empty relationship in the arms of others. Featuring astonishingly nervy performances from Marley, Carlin, and Cassavetes regulars Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, Faces confronts modern alienation and the battle of the sexes with a brutal honesty and compassion rarely matched in cinema.
A Woman Under the Influence
This uncompromising portrait of domestic turmoil details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself. Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk give unforgettably harrowing performances as a married couple deeply in love but unable to express their ardor in terms the other can understand. This landmark American film is perhaps the most beloved work from the extraordinary John Cassavetes.
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
John Cassavetes engages with film noir in his own inimitable style with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays a gentleman’s club owner, Cosmo Vitelli, desperately committed to maintaining a facade of suave gentility despite the seediness of his environment and his own unhealthy appetites. When he runs afoul of loan sharks, Cosmo must carry out a terrible crime or lose his way of life. Mesmerizing and idiosyncratic, the film is a provocative examination of masculine identity. It is presented here in two versions: Cassavetes’s original 1976 edit and his 1978 one, nearly thirty minutes shorter.
Opening Night
While in the midst of rehearsals for her latest play, Broadway actor Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) witnesses the accidental death of an adoring young fan, after which she begins to confront the chaos of her own life. Headlined by a virtuoso performance by Rowlands, John Cassavetes’s Opening Night lays bare the drama of a performer who, at great personal cost, makes a part her own, and it functions as a metaphor for the director’s singular, wrenched-from-the-heart creative method.
Release Information:
Technical Specifications
Supplements
- A Constant Forge: The Life and Art of John Cassavetes (2000), a 200-minute documentary by Charles Kiselyak
- Alternate eighteen-minute opening sequence
- Audio commentary by sound recordist and composer Bo Harwood and camera operator Mike Ferris
- New interview program featuring actor Ben Gazzara and producer Al Ruban
- New conversation between actors Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara
- New interviews with actress Lelia Goldoni and associate producer Seymour Cassel
- Episode of the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps from 1968, dedicated to director John Cassavetes
- New video conversation between actors Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk
- Audio interview with John Cassavetes from the 1970s
- New interview with producer and director of photography Al Ruban
- Silent footage from the Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop, from which Shadows emerged
- Making “Faces”, a 2004 documentary featuring interviews with actors Seymour Cassel, Lynn Carlin, and Gena Rowlands and director of photography Al Ruban
- Audio interview with director John Cassavetes from 1975
- Stills gallery
- Audio interview with director John Cassavetes from the 1970s
- Restoration demonstration
- Al Ruban on Lighting and Shooting “Faces,” a new program featuring commentary by Ruban
- Stills gallery
- Trailer
- Trailers
- Stills and poster galleries
- Trailer
- Trailer