John Cassavetes: From the Archive
March 6–13, 2003
John Cassavetes was America’s midcentury
pioneer of independent filmmaking. More than any other artist,
he demonstrated that an American
cinema made outside of Hollywood was not only possible,
but, given his ferocious and generous spirit, could be exceptional.
His cinema, at once spontaneous, intimate, and direct,
established both the rough aesthetic and the psychological
themes for a generation of filmmakers to follow, from
Martin Scorsese to the proponents of the film movement
Dogma 95. In 1980, The Museum of Modern Art prepared
its
first Cassavetes retrospective, John Cassavetes, Filmmaker
and Actor, establishing a strong relationship with the artist.
At the time
of Cassavetes’s death—in 1989, at the age of fifty-nine—MoMA
had collected most of his films, and the Department of Film and
Media prepared
a ten-work memorial exhibition, John Cassavetes: From the
Archive. Acknowledging the classic status of these works and the
filmmaker’s
continuing influence, the Department presents a reworked
version of that exhibition.
Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator,
Department of Film and Media.
. 1959. USA. Written and directed
by John Cassavetes. With Leila Goldoni, Ben Carruthers, Anthony
Ray. In 1959,
young New York television and film actor Cassavetes
began shooting a series of improvised situations with
friends in and around the city (including MoMA’s Sculpture
Garden), and ended by making the seminal American
independent feature Shadows. As much a coming-of-age
film as a portrait of Manhattan, Shadows was daring
in its suggestion that racial integration was natural. 35mm archival
print. 87 min.
. 1968. USA. Written and directed
by John Cassavetes. With John Marley, Gena Rowlands, Lynn Carlin,
Seymour Cassel.
Such was the emotional force of Faces that this coruscating
description of an imploding marriage became the first
postwar American independent film to receive a significant theatrical
release nationwide. 129 min.
. 1986. USA. Directed by John
Cassavetes. Screenplay by Warren Bogle (Andrew Bergman). With
Peter Falk,
Alan Arkin, Beverly D’Angelo. Cassavetes took
over the direction of this film a week or so into production,
and turned the reunion of the stars of The In-Laws (1979), Falk
and
Arkin, into what the New York Times critic Vincent
Canby called “an
intelligent, sometimes blissfully funny comedy” about
a hapless insurance salesman. 35mm archival print. 93
min.
.
1980. USA. Written and directed by John Cassavetes. With Gena Rowlands,
John Adames, Buck Henry. Gloria is Cassavetes’s near
miracle, a studio feature that is at times as edgy and harrowing
as any he made without industry involvement. In an Oscar-nominated
performance, Rowlands plays Gloria, a tough-as-nails chorine who—against
her better judgment—saves a doe-eyed boy from Mafia slaughter.
35mm archival print. 110 min.
. 1984. USA. Directed by John
Cassavetes. Screenplay by Cassavetes, based on a play by Ted
Allan. With
Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes, Seymour Cassel. A man and
a woman come together in crisis only to part, perhaps
forever. He believes that love is an illusion and sex is real;
she holds on to a romantic ideal. Cassavetes made
Love Streams knowing that he was dying of cancer,
and while this autumnal film may refer to other films of
his, it stands alone as poignant testimony to the redemptive
and crushing power of love. 35mm archival print. 141 min.
. 1975. USA.
Written and directed by John Cassavetes. With Gena Rowlands,
Peter Falk, Matthew
Cassel, Katherine Cassavetes, Lady Rowlands. Mabel
and Nick Longhetti are a working-class couple with
three children and mothers of their own. Mabel, who labors
under the influence of everyone but herself, is at a loss when
her family
is absent. If ever there was a persuasive film about
how even a loving family can drive an uncertain person
crazy by giving mixed signals, this often comic masterwork
is it. 35mm archival print. 146 min.
. 1978. USA. Written and directed
by John Cassavetes. With Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara,
Joan
Blondell, Zohra Lampert. Cassavetes and Rowlands examine
the idea of “performance” in
this play-within-a-film. An actress, middle-aged and at a turning
point in her career, witnesses the accidental death
of a fan on the opening night of her play, The
Second Woman. How this affects her life, both domestic and theatrical,
is what engages the director and his star. 35mm archival print.
144 min.
. 1970. USA. Written and directed
by John Cassavetes. With Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, Cassavetes.
Gazzara,
Falk, and Cassavetes play three friends who become
somewhat unhinged at the funeral of a fourth. Forgoing
their suburban hearths, the married men improvise an inebriated
odyssey that
brings them to London, other women, and despair. Cassavetes subtitled
the film A Comedy about Life, Death and Freedom. 35mm archival
print. 140
min.
. 1976.
USA. Written and directed by John Cassavetes. With Ben Gazzara,
Tim Carey, Seymour
Cassel. Nightclub owner Cosmos Vitello is in debt
to the mob. He would like to keep his strip joint out
of the hands of the Mafia, and tries to devise ways of freeing
himself
from the gangsters. MoMA’s 35mm archival copy
is the original version (the film was cut by roughly
twenty minutes for its 1978 release). 131 min.
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