Shadows, but actually in all reality I started with a film he acted in, such as The Dirty Dozen. However, I took an Independent Film class and I was introduced to Cassavetes as a director. Shadows, his first film, was the one we watched and then I worked my way to his other films from there. Honestly, I would go with one of his films that interests you the most.
http://www.theauteurs.com/topics/8015
youtube
shadows isn’t that good
For God’s sake Jason, YouTube is THE WORST PLACE YOU CAN POSSIBLY WATCH MOVIES. IT SHOULD BE FUCKING ILLEGAL. GAAAHHH!!!
Watch this instead:
I’ve seen A Woman Under the Influence firts and then the two cuts of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, the rest is still ahead of me.
I buy more stuff than anyone whose not a millionaire, but I like the option to sample something, even if its just a trailer.
I’ve blind bought enough junk.
Most of the stuff on youtube is stuff that isn’t available anywhere.
Problem is anything you view on YouTube is going to be junk. You’re watching it on a small screen with low quality, and get interrupted every ten minutes.
If you want to download movies (I do) there are torrent websites out there that you can get decent quality rips from.
“shadows isn’t that good”
It is a great debut.
Shadows has made me want to see more Cassavetes. While not spectacular it shows extraordinary promise for the Director. I have yet to have the chance to continue his filmography simply based on the time consumed in finding the best quality version of his work.
Shadows or A Woman Under the Influence are both great places to start.
Or if you can find it – Love Streams!
Just buy the box set. Do it.
I never got the appeal of ‘Shadows’ and ‘Faces’, but Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night are great in my opinion. Minnie and Moskowitz is good too, but Cassel’s performance kind of ruins it for me. Rowlands is fantastic though, as usual.
Love Streams is an interesting one. It’s definitely a Cassavetes film, but it’s hinting at something else.
The only reason i saw it is because my friend purchased the French dvd, and you can’t remove the subtitles btw, just a word of warning.
I’d save Love Streams for last. It’s a beautiful mess of a film that I think can be better enjoyed when already acquainted with Cassavetes’ style. The idea of the “swan song” is really appropriate here.
I started with Faces and haven’t looked back, though it’s probably my least favorite now.
“I’d save Love Streams for last. It’s a beautiful mess of a film that I think can be better enjoyed when already acquainted with Cassavetes’ style. The idea of the “swan song” is really appropriate here.”
well said. i’m glad i saved it till last for this very reason. It doesn’t always work, but there is a certain appeal in watching Cassavetes and Rowlands play sibllings on different life paths that is undeniable.
Killing of a Chinese Bookie or A Woman Under the Influence. They are his finest works imo and Chinese Bookie is very accessible. That being said, he didn’t really make a bad film. If you like those, check out the rest!
woman under influence – shadows – faces these are fine to start
In my opinion, Love Streams – if John hadn’t died – would have been a turning point his style which I feel was moving towards more internal expressiveness rather than his external modes of expression in the previous films. (Even though Chinese Bookie and Opening Night are good examples of this already.)
@stephen prokow
> “shadows isn’t that good”
> It is a great debut.
I agree.
Even if you don’t like them the first time or don’t like them later, you might change your mind as you revisit them in your later years.
I thought Shadows and Minnie and Moskowitz and Opening Night were weaker works but when I revisited them years later, I was very wrong.
They somehow work in places that you didn’t think worked before. John’s work seems to have that effect. They somehow “change” or “grow” with you or maybe it’s more honest to say, you “grow” with them.
I’m looking forward to viewing Faces in my 40s and 50s, at the age of the men and women in the film and I’m sure I’ll be seeing and hearing things I completely missed for lack of life experience.
“In my opinion, Love Streams – if John hadn’t died – would have been a turning point his style which I feel was moving towards more internal expressiveness rather than his external modes of expression in the previous films. (Even though Chinese Bookie and Opening Night are good examples of this already.)”
well said. as i mentioned earlier the film was definitely hinting at something else, and i agree it’s a little more subtle than his other films. Not that his other films don’t have ambigious or difficult moments, but ‘Love Streams’ is arguably more low key than usual.
“In my opinion, Love Streams – if John hadn’t died – would have been a turning point his style which I feel was moving towards more internal expressiveness rather than his external modes of expression in the previous films. (Even though Chinese Bookie and Opening Night are good examples of this already.)”
well said. as i mentioned earlier the film was definitely hinting at something else, and i agree it’s a little more subtle than his other films. Not that his other films don’t have ambigious or difficult moments, but ‘Love Streams’ is arguably more low key than usual.
“In my opinion, Love Streams – if John hadn’t died – would have been a turning point his style which I feel was moving towards more internal expressiveness rather than his external modes of expression in the previous films. (Even though Chinese Bookie and Opening Night are good examples of this already.)”
@JP
Can you elaborate more on what this is based on? Is it simply the late scene with the “vision?” I don’t know if it’s a real turning point as much as maybe a willingness to play a bit with internal visual expression while not allowing it to dominate and undermine his work the way it does many talented filmmakers that get lost in inwardness. I would doubt Cassavetes would ever allow his storytelling to neglect the external expression of interactive otherness that makes his work as great as it is.
It’s funny, I guess I should be annoyed at the multiple Cassavetes threads the way i am at QT and Bay threads but I’m not. Damned hypocritical of me:)
SHADOWS!
FACES!!!!! Seriously, watch that one first. I honestly think “Shadows” is the weakest of all of his films I’ve seen. Like someone said above me, it was a great debut but just an alright film.
JP: That’s interesting. I remember reading in Cass on Cass that he decided with Bookie to start creating more “virtuosic” films, and Bookie, Opening Night and Love Streams definitely have a shift in how open and expressive the characters are. Maybe with the exception of Gena in Love Streams, but even she doesn’t compare with the three Husbands.
For me, they’re his most difficult films. Bookie still goes over my head, but I appreciate Opening Night and Love Streams more every time I see them.
I think FACES is the film that most clearly displays all that was fascinating and revolutionary about him. It’s a let-it-all-hang-out movie which feels genuinely dangerous because it feels so out of control and wobbly.
A CHILD IS WAITING is one of the most profoundly moving films I’ve ever seen. It’s far more conventional than most Cassavetes movies, but his observation technique works wonders with a subject (a school for the mentally disabled) that could have easily turned into pablum in the hands of a more conventionally manipulative filmmaker.I like THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, but consider it a kind of litmus test for Cassavetes admirers, since it’s such a messy, ugly, shaggy dog of a movie – through in a brilliant way. I’ve known people driven kind of nuts by the movies refusal to be anything like a normal gangster movie. If you ever wanted to know precisely what it felt like to sit in a sleazy nightclub for a couple of hours while men waste lives of quiet desperation, it’s the movie for you, just like it was the movie for me.
I also love HUSBANDS, but the aesthetics of embarrassment it employs definitely turn a lot of people off.
Of course it’s only my opinion, but prepare to be underwhelmed.
That’s especially true if you have seen Cassavetes in FRONT of the camera and appreciate
what a gifted—sometimes stunning—actor he was.
The films he directed share a trait with certain types of art installations in museums:
unless the work in question is frontloaded with exegesis and/or special pleading by critics and academics,
not much can be gleaned from what goes on.
What does go on can be tedious and obvious.
I once thought that to describe a film as boring was too simplistic or reductive a critique.
You can’t just dismiss a motion picture as boring, I used to think.
But there stood director John Cassavetes saying, “Sure you can.”
It’s a true shame and loss that he spent so much time making movies instead of wowing us as an actor.
Watch his every move and breath in ROSEMARY’S BABY and you’ll see what I mean.
If you prefer films that are beautifully executed, suspenseful, yet ultimately empty experiences, you may agree with the above assessment. If you prefer raw experience to candy colored thrills, you may be mature enough to appreciate that the films he directed are great works of art. See a couple for yourself and whatever your reaction, plan to revisit them at a later date to see if your impressions change and grow. As you can see from some of the above posts and as you will read if you research intelligent critics, this filmmaker defies the expectations of those who are used to standard Hollywood conventions and rewards a different kind of patience than artists whose only goal is to stimulate our adolescent need to be momentarily “wowed” by an intense acting performance. Cassavetes hated easy sophistication in his performers and himself because he knew that we don’t learn anything when we are most at ease, we only learn when we work.
""Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are… In this country, people die at 21. They die emotionally at 21, maybe younger… My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21… The films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution on how to save pain" – John Cassavetes
the whole concept of ‘boredom’ is a legitimate reading strategy for artfilms though. I forgot who came up with the theory but it’s true. art films do actually ‘bore’ you, on purpose, and the great moments stand out because of, and not in spite of, the ‘boredom’ that preceeded them.
It’s a long and complex theory but it works when applied to a lot of directors and i always felt that way about the films of Takeshi Kitano in the mid 90’s, before i knew much about art film or film theory in general.
Charlesdegaulle
Is A Woman Under the Influence a viable place to start?