Opening Night (Cassavetes, 1977): Close-Up Cinema, 8pm
This film, part of a John Cassavetes season at Close-Up Cinema (details here), is also being screened on April 2nd and 23rd (all the dates and films can be found here).
Chicago Reader review:
For all of John Cassavetes's concern with acting, this 1977 film is the
only one of his features that takes it on as a subject; it also boasts
his most impressive cast. During the New Haven tryouts for a new play,
an aging star (Gena Rowlands), already distressed that she's playing a
woman older than herself, is traumatized further by the accidental death
of an adoring teenage fan (Laura Johnson). Fantasizing the continued
existence of this girl as a younger version of herself, she repeatedly
changes her lines onstage and addresses the audience directly, while the
other members of the company—the director (Ben Gazzara), playwright
(Joan Blondell), costar (Cassavetes), and producer (Paul Stewart)—try to
help end her distress. Juggling onstage and offstage action, Cassavetes
makes this a fascinating look at some of the internal mechanisms and
conflicts that create theatrical fiction, and his wonderful cast—which
also includes Zohra Lampert as the director's wife, assorted Cassavetes
regulars, and cameos by Peter Falk and Peter Bogdanovich as
themselves—never lets him down.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is an extraordinary sequence from a TV interview in which Cassavetes implores people to go and see Opening Night.
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