Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

chaos-rampant This is the film that nearly broke Cassavetes for good. It played in a single LA theater for a few weeks to empty seats before being shelved, never really opening. People would not have flocked to see it but it must have been dismay that shakes you to your core, to go through all this work and just shelve it at the end. In a few years time it would be playing in MoMA.Cassavetes' whole project of making films is one of the most fascinating in the medium. We have only tidbits on screen really. The rest is tucked away in the filming process that went into discovering each film. It's in the hours of footage he never used. The four hour versions of Husbands and Woman we'll never see. His struggles to make each one are comparable to Welles, remarkable men both.The story goes that he was so spent after making Woman that he was never the same again. He had said his piece and in the most pure way possible. Before and after are iterations of the same way of seeing anyway, as is always with makers who have something to impart and don't just show up for work. But he was fervent to keep going: he used the profits from that film to make Chinese Bookie and this out of pocket.Bookie saw him reflecting on his own place as proprietor of lively improvisations while having to deliver a gangster plot to appease money men. It was not just cynical work. It was a meditative search for a true face from among different masks; suave playboy, entertainer, killer. It continues here, the same business with roles and faces.As always, actors fumble and fret within the constraints of a story imposed on them. The camera swims as one of them would, as if culled from inside an actor uncertain about his presence, losing and finding again. The whole has that thick, viscous quality I love about him, it demands concentrated staying in that space where nothing is yet decided. This is Cassavetes' room. By this point you'll know whether you like it or not. This is about an actress asked to go into that room and portray a role: woman pushing forty, childless and unmarried. It's for a play they're preparing for New York out in the sticks. She is all of those things in "real life" so what would make better sense than to portray truthfully?But this is the whole thing with Cassavetes, why you deserve to have him in your life above all those other filmmakers who mollycoddle you with redemptions. With him truth is something you set out to find by shedding self, it's not handed down by any role and you have to make sure of that. It's what you find after you have stopped tossing the room for it. After words and guises have been peeled back, what is there? This whole film is about an actress, Rowlands, fighting to shed that self that stands in the way of true expression. The play role expects middle-aged desperation about life, self- pity. Melodrama stuff. But she can't do it, won't. She could tap into those parts of herself but that would be giving into those parts, nurturing them, conceding to be the person the story says you must be.So she won't do it. People plead with her, cajole, scold or lecture her but nothing does it, she is adamant. It has a few blunt devices along the way: seance and ghost of a younger self. Her refusal to do the sensible thing aggravates. In the all important premiere she finally arrives late and drunk and everyone concedes that it's not going to happen.All of this ribs on Cassavetes own method of sustained, structured collapse where the point isn't to use actors to convey certainties of drama, it's to use drama to chisel the persons who will live through its effect on them. Whatever that comes to be. It all has to arrive to a point of intense uncertainty. A cessation of thought so that things will be free to mean themselves.You'll see what he does in the end. It's Cassavetes and Rowlands on a stage in a culmination of a parallel life in which they never married. It's marvelous. It doesn't really work and you will probably note that he misses. But if you're someone who tries to be the person you truly feel in your heart to be, you will rejoice to see the baring and nothing pretty, sad or redemptive salvaged out of it so we'll applaud. It's the reach that drives it, the transcendent reach for that idea all about masks dropping and having to face yourself bare, and in his reach he is as vast as Tarkovsky.

Ore-Sama Gena Rowlands, known for her spell binding performances (especially in Cassavette films), gives perhaps her greatest performance yet as aging theater actress, Myrtile Gordon. Beloved by her peers and fans alike, she struggles with her latest role, having to play an aging woman, a role that forces her to face herself, a role she despises. That's on top of witnessing the death of a young, rabid fan. As the opening of the play, "Second Woman" comes closer, her downward mental spiral only worsens.It's hard to know what to say about this film. I've mentioned Rowland's performance, great as it is, is enhanced by fantastic cinematography.Shots such as Rowlands looking herself in the mirror, but in such a fashion that it appears someone is sitting next to her, the many well timed close ups of her face, among the many genius shots. This is the closest Cassavette has come to making a psychological thriller. Those familiar with "Black Swan" or even "Persona" will no doubt notice similarities, although as is usually the case with this director, it never fully fits any particular genre, only giving you shades of it. Anyone expecting any ultimate outcome or revelation will be disappointed. Is Myrtile's problem alcoholism? Is she simply insane? Is it all just about aging?Is it all of that? Like many things in life, it's much more likely to be a variety of factors, and it only aids the film in creating multiple layers to this dilemma rather than trying to build around one problem.The play within the movie (reportedly filmed in front of an undirected audience giving legitimate reactions), where often times Myrtile changes dialogue, goes off script, are less interesting than what goes on behind the scenes, however this doesn't hurt the film much, especially when, given the unpredictability of the lead actress, can go off at any moment in a completely unpredictable direction and become a further unveiling of the actors on stage. A big part of this film is the creative process, of the some times rigid adherence to script, to the very idea of staging emotions and feelings that are pre rendered into a script. Perhaps it's for this reason that the on stage antics don't feel as powerful, but ultimately beneficial to the film on a thematic level.Many, especially if used only to mainstream movies, might find this movie slow and confusing. Cassavette's style does take getting used to. Having watched other films of his however, I found this, despite it's near two and a half hour length, to be an easy sit with time flying by. Absolutely recommended.

cmccann-2 When speaking of John Cassavetes' contribution to the cinema, 'Opening Night' often goes overlooked. A shame, because it's a great film in its own right.A character-driven drama about a stage actress's fall from grace, it follows Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) as she struggles with various personal problems (the death of a young fan, aging, alcoholism) in the time leading up to the premiere of a new play. 'Opening Night' also features Ben Gazzara as the theatre director and Cassavetes himself as one of the play's co-stars, with Cassavetes regulars like Peter Falk and Seymour Cassel providing bit-part roles.This is one of the director's most personal films, and one he spoke about with much pride in interviews. The stamp of his distinctive style is there (roving documentary-style camera-work, emphasis on acting) and the major themes in his own life at the time are reflected in the picture (theater, drinking problems, aging). Gena Rowlands gives a stellar performance, making Myrtle into a sort of tragic heroine, and the rest of the cast does well supporting her.Worth checking out for anyone interested in the art of acting or the work of John Cassavetes. 8/10.

jzappa I was absolutely blown away by John Cassavetes's Opening Night. It's the first movie of his that I've seen that seems to be on a bigger scale, thus it feels more mainstream, but it still doesn't feel as if he grounded himself any more than he has in his previous films. That is perhaps what makes it so intense. There is also something undoubtedly cathartic about watching this movie.It's about what in fact Cassavetes has made a staple of his career, an ideal that he has expressed behind the camera throughout his career as a director and is here expressing it in front. Rowlands's character, middle-aged stage actress Myrtle Gordon, cannot bring herself to play her role in the upcoming production as written so she uncalculatedly follows impulse after impulse, resulting in what appears to be chaos on stage, until she finds the right one. It's a daringly abstract premise.This is a movie that does not fail to capture the innate steering that one goes through during an emotional cleansing. No one understands why Myrtle does many of the things she does, and it is seen and even portrayed as something destructive, yet it just might be the best thing for her. It may be a cleansing rather than a breakdown. A withdrawal, a cocoon, a rebellion, it all culminates into a meltdown. Cassavetes gives her character a brutally real touch, which is that early on, she is ardently arguing that she has nothing in common with her character, yet she is in quiet but emotionally corroding fear that the opposite is true.The last scene, the climactic performance that Myrtle shares with a character painfully estranged from her who is acting with her, is one of the most interesting, hilarious, hard-hitting, enlightening, and enjoyable moments I've ever seen in a movie.