Husbands. (12A.)
Directed by John Cassavetes. 1970.
Starring Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Lee Wright, Noelle Kao, John Kuller and Meta Shaw. Out on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. 142 mins.
When I was a teenager it seemed like Husbands, Cassavetes' rambling tale of three middle-aged men going on an extended bender after the suicide of a friend, was the Friday late film on BBC1 at least once a year. And I would always switch over to it once the rest of the family had gone to bed in the vague hope of some adult content. A false hope: Husbands is grown up in all the worst ways. Possibly so much so that it goes all the way back round to childish. The review on that day's TV page would invariably mention “indulgent” and “tough slog,” but as I never lasted more than 15 minutes before getting bored I didn't get to appreciate just how much that was the case.
If not quite a star, Cassavettes was definitely a name actor through the 60s and 70s, appearing in Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen. His name though has survived as a director, (The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, A Woman Under The Influence, Gloria) and quite an influential one, an originator of US independent cinema. He was an actors director: he put performance at the heart of the process and encouraged improvisation. But the thing about actors directors is that they are often not-for-anybody-else directors.
Husbands starts out, after a montage of photos of four friends at various family events, with a funeral, one of those open-air, standing around in the cold, type of funerals. Afterwards, his three friends decide to go and get drunk: a process that takes a number of days and requires them flying to London halfway through.
It may be worth reflecting now that after filming had finished, an editor put together a near three hour cut of the film that was enthusiastically previewed to audiences. Everybody loved it, except Cassavetes who then spent the best part of the year in the editing room pulling it apart and putting into the abrasive form we have now. Cassavetes thespian-centric approach means that the scenes often drag on longer than might be considered necessary but the real thrower is his assault on continuity and context.
The first real example of this comes about twenty minutes in. So far we've seen the three of them horsing around drunk in the street, on a tube train and then playing basketball in a gym. And then suddenly they are in a dark smoky bar, surrounded by people at least a generation older than them, overseeing some kind of singing competition. And you wonder how did they get here? Are these other people friends of the deceased? Random strangers? And why did this trio of comfortably off career men end up in such a low rent bar? And why are the others all singing for them?
And you go on wondering because the scene, which continues for at least 15 minutes, never reveals any point. It is though excruciating to watch, as the three of them alternate between patronising condescension, aggression and, with one old lady whose performance they object to, overt bullying. This sequence encapsulates the benefits and drawbacks of Cassavetes' method. The realism of the performers all being drunk, of nobody knowing exactly where they are going, gives it a wincing electricity. You may not like it, but you will remember it.
It should be clarified that improvised doesn't mean make-it-all-up-as-they-go-along; it means that it just looks like they're making it all up as they go along. There was a script, albeit one that was in a constant state of flux and revision. Freed from the strictures of hitting marks and learning lines the actors are expected to dig deep and find something fresh rather than falling back on their usual coping strategies. But what do they come up with? A lot of shouting mainly, especially Cassavettes, and the three of them circle back to self-portraits. The longer the film goes on the less it seems like Falk, Cassavetes and Gazzara are giving us three boorish middle-class men working through a midlife crisis, and the more you suspect that they are showing us three boorish movie actors self-satisfied enough to think that they don't need a script to be interesting.
Which may actually be a profound truth. Among the extras is an appearance by the three of them on the Dick Cavett Show (no Criterion Collection disc seems to be complete without an excerpt from this 70's chat show) in which they turn up drunk and disruptive, and refuse to play along with the format, making themselves look like complete knob heads. This was surely the most honest piece of movie promotion ever, aptly demonstrating to viewers what the film would be like. Actors always tell you that they just want to do good work, to reveal human truths. Husbands confirms what we've always suspected: that what they really want is simply to be the centre of attention.
Husbands is a frustrating, maddening watch but still absorbing. Here's where a Criterion disc pays off because the exploration of the film in the Supplements is fascinating. I always thought that this was considered to be one of Cassavetes' lesser films but in the most recent Sight And Sound Asleep poll it was the second of four of his films to make it into the filmmakers' list. Probably a lot of votes were motivated by professional envy that he managed to get away with it, but it can't be denied that occasionally it comes up with something wonderful. When Falk tries to hit on an old lady (an extra picked out by Cassavetes) in a London casino, her response is so extraordinary, so out there, Falk seems genuinely rattled.
Rather than add richness and depth, the film seems to expose the shortcomings of the performances. Of the three stars, I'd say that Falk comes out of it the best because he's the only one who makes any kind of connection with the audience. Overall, the supporting cast fares much better. In London, they pick up three girls. Jenny Runacre commands her scenes with Cassavetes but the one that struck me was Jenny Lee Wright. She was destined to spend the seventies being a dolly bird prop for Benny Hill and the like and to be honest her role her isn't much more than that: she has few lines and her screentime is spent reacting to Gazzara. She's good though, really good; giving her character a dignity she maybe doesn't deserve. You miss her once she has gone but that is the Cassavetes method: he'll uncover a diamond only to move on to something less valuable.
Directed by John Cassavetes. 1970.
Starring Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Lee Wright, Noelle Kao, John Kuller and Meta Shaw. Out on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. 142 mins.
When I was a teenager it seemed like Husbands, Cassavetes' rambling tale of three middle-aged men going on an extended bender after the suicide of a friend, was the Friday late film on BBC1 at least once a year. And I would always switch over to it once the rest of the family had gone to bed in the vague hope of some adult content. A false hope: Husbands is grown up in all the worst ways. Possibly so much so that it goes all the way back round to childish. The review on that day's TV page would invariably mention “indulgent” and “tough slog,” but as I never lasted more than 15 minutes before getting bored I didn't get to appreciate just how much that was the case.
If not quite a star, Cassavettes was definitely a name actor through the 60s and 70s, appearing in Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen. His name though has survived as a director, (The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, A Woman Under The Influence, Gloria) and quite an influential one, an originator of US independent cinema. He was an actors director: he put performance at the heart of the process and encouraged improvisation. But the thing about actors directors is that they are often not-for-anybody-else directors.
Husbands starts out, after a montage of photos of four friends at various family events, with a funeral, one of those open-air, standing around in the cold, type of funerals. Afterwards, his three friends decide to go and get drunk: a process that takes a number of days and requires them flying to London halfway through.
It may be worth reflecting now that after filming had finished, an editor put together a near three hour cut of the film that was enthusiastically previewed to audiences. Everybody loved it, except Cassavetes who then spent the best part of the year in the editing room pulling it apart and putting into the abrasive form we have now. Cassavetes thespian-centric approach means that the scenes often drag on longer than might be considered necessary but the real thrower is his assault on continuity and context.
The first real example of this comes about twenty minutes in. So far we've seen the three of them horsing around drunk in the street, on a tube train and then playing basketball in a gym. And then suddenly they are in a dark smoky bar, surrounded by people at least a generation older than them, overseeing some kind of singing competition. And you wonder how did they get here? Are these other people friends of the deceased? Random strangers? And why did this trio of comfortably off career men end up in such a low rent bar? And why are the others all singing for them?
And you go on wondering because the scene, which continues for at least 15 minutes, never reveals any point. It is though excruciating to watch, as the three of them alternate between patronising condescension, aggression and, with one old lady whose performance they object to, overt bullying. This sequence encapsulates the benefits and drawbacks of Cassavetes' method. The realism of the performers all being drunk, of nobody knowing exactly where they are going, gives it a wincing electricity. You may not like it, but you will remember it.
It should be clarified that improvised doesn't mean make-it-all-up-as-they-go-along; it means that it just looks like they're making it all up as they go along. There was a script, albeit one that was in a constant state of flux and revision. Freed from the strictures of hitting marks and learning lines the actors are expected to dig deep and find something fresh rather than falling back on their usual coping strategies. But what do they come up with? A lot of shouting mainly, especially Cassavettes, and the three of them circle back to self-portraits. The longer the film goes on the less it seems like Falk, Cassavetes and Gazzara are giving us three boorish middle-class men working through a midlife crisis, and the more you suspect that they are showing us three boorish movie actors self-satisfied enough to think that they don't need a script to be interesting.
Which may actually be a profound truth. Among the extras is an appearance by the three of them on the Dick Cavett Show (no Criterion Collection disc seems to be complete without an excerpt from this 70's chat show) in which they turn up drunk and disruptive, and refuse to play along with the format, making themselves look like complete knob heads. This was surely the most honest piece of movie promotion ever, aptly demonstrating to viewers what the film would be like. Actors always tell you that they just want to do good work, to reveal human truths. Husbands confirms what we've always suspected: that what they really want is simply to be the centre of attention.
Husbands is a frustrating, maddening watch but still absorbing. Here's where a Criterion disc pays off because the exploration of the film in the Supplements is fascinating. I always thought that this was considered to be one of Cassavetes' lesser films but in the most recent Sight And Sound Asleep poll it was the second of four of his films to make it into the filmmakers' list. Probably a lot of votes were motivated by professional envy that he managed to get away with it, but it can't be denied that occasionally it comes up with something wonderful. When Falk tries to hit on an old lady (an extra picked out by Cassavetes) in a London casino, her response is so extraordinary, so out there, Falk seems genuinely rattled.
Rather than add richness and depth, the film seems to expose the shortcomings of the performances. Of the three stars, I'd say that Falk comes out of it the best because he's the only one who makes any kind of connection with the audience. Overall, the supporting cast fares much better. In London, they pick up three girls. Jenny Runacre commands her scenes with Cassavetes but the one that struck me was Jenny Lee Wright. She was destined to spend the seventies being a dolly bird prop for Benny Hill and the like and to be honest her role her isn't much more than that: she has few lines and her screentime is spent reacting to Gazzara. She's good though, really good; giving her character a dignity she maybe doesn't deserve. You miss her once she has gone but that is the Cassavetes method: he'll uncover a diamond only to move on to something less valuable.
