A Woman Under the Influence

A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE                   A                    

USA  (147 mi)  1974  d:  John Cassavetes

I’m very concerned about the depiction of women on the screen.  It’s related to their being either high or low class concubines, and the only question is when or where will they go to bed, and with whom or how many.  There’s nothing to do with the dreams of women, or of woman as the dream, nothing to do with the quirky part of her, the wonder of her...I’m sure we could have made a more successful film if we had depicted Mabel’s life as rougher, more brutal; if it made statements so that people could definitely take sides.  But along the way, I’d have to look at myself and say, ‘Yes, we were successful at creating another horror in the world.’  I don’t know anyone who has had such a terrible time that she doesn’t smile ever, that she doesn’t have time to love, open her eyes, think about the details of life.  Something wonderful happens all the time, even at the height of tragedy...I wanted to show that too...It’s never as clear as it is in the movies.  People don’t know what they’re doing most of the time, myself included.  They don’t know what they want or feel.  It’s only in the movies that they know what their problems are and have game plans for dealing with them.  All my life I’ve fought against clarity – all those stupid definitive answers.  Phooey on the formula life, on slick solutions.  It’s never easy.  And I don’t think people really want their lives to be easy.  It’s a United States sickness.  In the end it makes things more difficult.                 —John Cassavetes   

Along with Faces (1968), these are the two most emotionally exhaustive works in the Cassavetes repertoire, and the most difficult to experience, where afterwards you feel fatigued and emotionally spent, though the uncomfortable structure of the film, continually built around ensemble pieces spiraling out of control, resembles Husbands (1970).  While it’s something of a choreography of mood changes, it’s arguably Cassavetes’ most acclaimed film, though the New York critics loathed it when it was released, forcing Cassavetes to distribute the film himself, eventually doubling the box office receipts of Faces (with profits paying for most of the production costs of his next two films), where American Film Institute students working for free comprised most of the crew, including cinematographer Caleb Deschanel who was later fired on the set, taking nearly the entire crew with him, as they all regarded Cassavetes as impossible to work with, as he completely dismissed their working methods.  Originally written by the director as a theater piece, designed as three plays, each to be performed over three separate nights for Ben Gazarra and the unparalleled Gena Rowlands, who offers a towering performance, but the Academy Award was given to Ellen Burstyn in the more sweetly conventional Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), where the plays were eventually turned into a film, as Rowlands felt the daily performances of this role would be too demanding, that no one could survive such a harrowing test of endurance.  She plays Mabel Longhetti, someone without inhibitions, a funny, seductive and enchanting woman, who, unlike other films like Rolf de Heer’s THE QUIET ROOM (1996) or Alain Berliner’s MA VIE EN ROSE (1997), which feature parents without the imagination to understand their children, Mabel has plenty of imagination to spare, but is caught in a world gone wrong.  “She’s not crazy, she’s unusual.”  But no one is really listening, no one understands her, in one of Rowland’s greatest and most vulnerable roles, easily her most human, a misfit among misfits, a working class housewife’s descent into a mental breakdown, surrounded by all the so-called “loving” people who drove her there.  She wants so much, wants to care so much, driven to despair by her own unrealized expectations.  Frustrations, embarrassments, and disappointments just fill the screen in this film, an endless rhythm of giant mood swings, an emotional symphony played out before our eyes, where Maria Callas opens the film with the music of opera, foreshadowing the demonstrative passions to come.  Rowlands pleaded with her husband for help in understanding her character, growing more and more irritated when he refused, literally glaring at him, angry at the way he was treating her, but somehow all that anger dissipated offscreen as her onscreen persona was pure innocence and vulnerability. 

John Cassavetes is connected to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary's Baby (1968), a film he despised, by the way, playing the lying and deceiving husband that drugs his wife Rosemary to conceive the devil’s child, using a flashback-style of recurring dreams that slowly become Rosemary’s reality, where she is left alone to contend with and ultimately embrace a hellish nightmare that becomes her life, with no possible way out.  It’s considered one of the great psychological horror films.  Less than a decade later, Cassavetes writes this film, with critic Molly Haskell calling it “The biggest piece of garbage I’ve ever seen,” yet it’s easily one of the most frighteningly cruel films ever made, scarier perhaps even than the Polanski horror epic, yet it’s a love story, but one with brutal interior ramifications.  Peter Falk, who partially funded the movie from earnings from the television series Columbo (1968 – 2003) and who plays against type, is Mabel’s overbearing husband Nick, a more introverted, closed-in man, a city sewer worker who brings the entire hard-hat work crew home with him after a midnight shift, where they sit around the kitchen table for a spaghetti breakfast.  Mabel wants to like everyone, draw them out of their shells, and appears to be succeeding, as one of the black workers, none other than older brother Hugh Heard from Shadows (1959), is singing Italian opera from Aida, where she literally stares down the guy’s throat to find out where all that dramatic power is coming from, but when she gets too friendly the mood shifts instantly when Nick, embarrassed by her somewhat kooky display of affection, yells at her to “Sit your ass down!” clearing the house instantly in a moment of complete embarrassment.  Yet afterwards Nick tells her she did nothing wrong, but she’s overcome by the fear of getting screamed at and humiliated in front of company, where Nick’s abusive habit of trying to control every situation by yelling and inflicting demeaning behavior has a way of sending mixed messages, where often the emotional circuitry gets confused, leaving Mabel a nervous wreck.    

Having worked through the night, Nick is trying to get some sleep afterwards, but is interrupted by a visit from Grandma and the kids, with the kids jumping all over his bed wanting to play, but this time, Mabel yells at them to get away, ordering Grandma to take them to school.  In an immediate mood shift, after the kids leave, the house is stunningly quiet, with Mabel quickly realizing, “Boy, I can hardly wait for the kids to come home from school.  All of a sudden I miss everyone.”  In a truly wonderful scene, Mabel can be seen in mismatched clothes jumping up and down in the middle of the street, excitedly waiting after school for her kid’s school bus, where the anticipation is warmhearted and joyful, throwing them a party when they get home with the neighbor’s kids.  She plays them the music to Swan Lake, asking the straight-laced neighbor Mr. Jensen (Mario Gallo) if he dances, “Kids, that’s Swan Lake, you know, the dying swan.  C’mon and die for Mr. Jensen.” One by one, the kids drop like flies, Dying Swan - YouTube (1:23).  But Mr. Jensen can only handle so much of this pure anarchy, so perfectly realized with Mabel’s chubby daughter Maria (Christina Grisanti, real life daughter of one of the hard-hats) running around the house butt naked as the theme quickly changes to a costume party.  In utter disbelief at how out of control everything is, Mr. Jensen orders his kids to leave (with Xan Cassavetes, the older daughter playing one of the Jensen kids, while Mabel’s oldest son Tony is actually the son of Seymour Cassel), where the mood swings from innocent happiness to a stunning nightmare, as the party ends in a fight with Nick slugging the neighbor, yelling he’s going to kill him, then slugging Mabel, threatening to kill her.  It’s an amazing turnaround.   

From utter turmoil, it only get worse, as Nick calls the psychiatrist to have her committed, believing his wife is deliriously out of control, as he simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand her, as for him, everything has to be spelled out in black and white terms, where as the man he gets to decide what’s what.  The beauty of the entire children sequence is that it was delightfully innocent fun, where the kids were happily playing along with each other, and only the parents got upset.  The degree of horror displayed in this scene is utterly chilling, one of the ugliest scenes on film, especially once Nick’s mother shows up (Katherine Cassavetes, the director’s mother), adding fuel to the fire in an emotional roller coaster of shifting emotions, urging the doctor to take her away.  While Nick pretends to have a change of heart, as Mabel becomes suddenly afraid they’re all conspiring against her, but the real instigator is his mother pleading with the doctor to give her a sedating shot to shut her up, ranting at the top of her lungs “This woman is crazy!” Of course, the compliant doctor, little more than a weasel of the establishment, willingly obeys, signing the order for a 6-month institutionalization, becoming a socially imposed order that is nothing more than insanity itself imposed upon Mabel.  As emotionally traumatized as she is, she is the voice of clarity in this family, but no one listens, ruling with an iron fist, like a totalitarian government imposing their control.  Of note, Cassavetes was not aware what direction this scene would take, as he left it up to the actors and was susprised that Nick allowed Mabel to be institutionalized,  Peter Falk’s explanation was that Rowlands was so superb that he didn’t want to interrupt her performance, and by the time he realized what was happening it was too late.  Cassavetes, of course, never bought that explanation, believing Nick was just being over-controlling, but was happy the scene erupted into a life force of its own.     

Perhaps worst of all, the kids watch their mother get sent away for reasons they can’t understand.  Without Mabel in the picture, we’re forced to witness Nick’s sorry excuse for fatherhood, where he is more like a drill sergeant, ordering his kids around, dragging them this way and that, feeding them beer as he feebly tries to apologize and justify his actions to them, and is just a pathetic disgrace for a parent.  In yet another mood swing, Nick throws a grandiose party for Mabel’s return 6 month’s later, but realizing her potential social awkwardness, convinced by his mother that it would be a bad idea, he throws everyone out at the last minute except for the immediate family, which gathers around Mabel like a witches coven from Rosemary's Baby, all staring at her where she’s literally petrified to move, analyzing her every wince and murmur, repeating like a mantra for her to relax, take it easy, not to over exert herself, basically driving her so crazy she orders them all to go.  But no one listens to her until she starts singing to herself, utterly ignoring them all, off into her own little world.  When they finally do leave, she makes a terrible attempt to cut herself, saved by Nick with the kids jumping all over her, where she’s subjected to yet another slap from Nick.  Then, in a final inexplicable mood shift, with blood still dripping from her cut hand, Mabel tucks her children gently and lovingly into bed, putting the dishes away, and turning out the lights, as life goes on while an original piano improvisation that played at the opening is heard again, this time adding kazoos.  The piano music by Bo Harwood is raw and simple, perfectly matching the naturalistic mood, and accordingly adds a timeless simplicity to the original score.

This is a transforming film about what makes us so different from one another, with Nick barking out orders, wanting to control Mabel’s lunacy while at the same time encouraging it, and Mabel, the vulnerable, dying swan who pays the cost for not holding back, who means well and thinks she can charm the world by continuously being motivated by a love for everyone she meets, where neither have malice in their hearts, but both cause each other severe emotional harm.  Especially chilling is how the film reveals the emptiness of those in charge, who have the full force of authority to get their way, no matter what price, even if it destroys a loved one.  It's a nightmarish story and some feminists may see this as ultimately an abusive one, but the unvarnished truth is the couple does love each other, each continuously trying to do better, and it does show the lengths that people will have to go to find love.  While there are only subtle references to Mabel’s medicine cabinet, such as an evening when Mabel goes out drinking alone and gets completely blitzed, this movie was made at a time when diet pills as uppers (amphetamines, speed) and downers (valium, barbiturates) were commonly available and even normal in middle class American homes, usually making matters much worse in combination with alcohol.  Mabel’s fragile insecurity is driven by an insatiable need to be needed and appreciated, where she simply loves too much, while her immediate family’s reactionary instincts drive her even further off the edge.  This is truly an expression of undying love, as in the end, little has changed for the better, as the conflicts they cause each other remain thoroughly entrenched in their lives, yet you feel somehow this couple is inseparable, that they will find the will to survive and persevere through whatever emotional cost they have to pay if it means staying together.  This is an unforgettable film that creates such unimaginable emotional depth, described by many as one of the films of the decade.  Of note, in post-release comments, the director interestingly pointed out that in real life, Rowlands plays Nick to Cassavetes’ Mabel. 

Shadows

SHADOWS                 A                    

USA  (87 mi)  1959  d:  John Casssavetes

Shadows was an experiment. It predominantly came out of a workshop. We were improvising on a story, one that was in my mind. It was my secret. Every scene in Shadows was very simple; they were predicated on people having problems that were overcome with other problems…There was a struggle because firstly I had never done a film before, and secondly the actors had to find the confidence to have quiet at times, and not just constantly talk. This took about the first three weeks of the schedule. Eventually all this material was thrown away, and then everyone became cool and easy and relaxed and they had their own things to say, which was the point.

As you go along in life sometimes your innermost thoughts become less and less a part of you, and once you lose them you don’t have anything else.  I don’t think anyone does it purposefully.  It’s just that a lot of people are not aware of losing those things.  I found myself losing them too, and then suddenly I woke up by accident, by sheer accident of not getting along with something, with something inside. 

—John Cassavetes, 1968

While Cassavetes often receives credit with this film for being the father of American independent filmmaking, he was heavily influenced by Italian Realism films, especially screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, who Cassavetes claims “is surely the greatest screenwriter that ever lived,” along with American studio directors Frank Capra and Robert Rossen, also independent directors Shirley Clarke, Lionel Rogosin, and Morris Engel’s Little Fugitive (1953), where cinéma vérité was an American artform long before the French adopted it.  This is a landmark Black and White film, originally shot by Erich Kollmar on 16 mm, later transferred to 35 mm, a contemporary of French New Wave works like Godard’s BREATHLESS (1960) and Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), or perhaps more significantly, Rivette’s PARIS BELONGS TO US (1961), as this has a New York Belongs To Us feel about it, as the streets of Manhattan and the music of Charles Mingus mix with a free-form jazz improvisational style expressed in quick, jerky, handheld camera movements attuned to Beat movement music and rhythms, producing a grittier realism along with the feel of unscripted dialogue and humor, a wonderful glimpse at a spirit and energy of American youth yearning for freedom.  From Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Rarely has so much warmth, delicacy, subtlety, and raw feeling emerged so naturally and beautifully from performances in an American film.”  Written, directed, and co-edited by Cassavetes, this is an exuberant film about love, race, changing identity, and searching for meaning in relationships, where each character has a hard time just being themselves, as they’re continually caught off guard, where you catch a glimpse of “I love you truly, truly dear...,” a song that reappears later in all its glory in MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ (1971).  The opening sequence of three young guys with three girls, without a clue in the world what to do, yet covering it up with forced laughter and comic showboating, is exactly what the grown men do a decade later in HUSBANDS (1970). 

Made for $40,000 using a nonprofessional cast and crew, using borrowed and rented equipment, the texture of the film comes from the grainy film stock, the constantly roving camera, and restless characters that refuse to sit still, as even when standing or sitting their minds are constantly on high alert, sending out streams of energy that are the signpost of this breakout film, where perhaps the underlying theme is coming out of the late 50’s, an era of suffocating conformity, where learning to eschew the conventional pathways and follow your own path was essential, as it was especially important to believe in yourself and trust your own instincts.  With astonishing raw intensity, the film rushes ahead at breakneck speed while also probing into the psychological interiors of the characters who each lay bare their souls.  All using their own first names, two brothers and a sister live together, but only the oldest is dark skinned black, while the two youngest are light skinned enough to pass for white, a matter of consequence as the film progresses.  Lelia Goldoni is stunning as the sensual, yet often opinionated young 20-year old sister who is delightfully confused with the attention of two white guys and one black guy, where we follow her friendships, arguments, sexual encounters, parties and dances, as she tries to blend in and pretend that race doesn’t matter and that “casual” sex has no consequences.  Abandoned by Tony (Anthony Ray), one of the white lovers when he discovers her race, her world turns upside down, Shadows by John Cassavetes YouTube (4:46).  The other younger brother (Ben Carruthers) is an unemployed trumpet player caught up in the bohemian Greenwich Village scene where he’s always trying to find the elusive mood of hipster cool and spends most of his time unsuccessfully chasing girls while out with his friends.  The older brother (Hugh Heard) is the only one working, responsible enough to continue chasing after third-rate singing jobs to pay the bills, but he’s tired of being passed over for lesser talents and for the way he’s continually mistreated in the business, yet he tries to be the strong, protecting older brother.  Each seems to be fooling themselves in a film that captures the immediacy of the moment, the importance of now, leaving one to wonder what to do in the next moment. 

SHADOWS, like Cassavetes’ later work GLORIA (1980), are two of the best films ever made showcasing the streets of New York, where even a freewheeling discussion about art (“You don’t have to understand it!  If you feel it, you feel it, that’s it man.”), which may as well provide an underlying context of the film, makes beautiful use of the Museum of Modern Art, Shadows (Dir: John Cassavetes) - YouTube (2:07).  Two years after the original shoot, however, in February 1959, Cassavetes spent two weeks reshooting several scenes, such as Lelia’s unflinchingly honest love scene where the director shows an inordinate amount of concern for the confusion in her character about what happens next, Shadows (John Cassavetes) YouTube (3:42), or her prolonged walk down 42nd Street alone where she gets accosted by a guy and none other than Cassavetes himself as a complete stranger comes to her aid, Shadows [Dir: John Cassavetes] - Leia y el jazz YouTube (1:21), or her quarrelsome dance scene at a club with her black partner, all of which round out her character, adding greater depth without altering her initial identity — interesting that with this version, Goldoni provides one of the more memorable and underrated performances in film.  Seen today, one might marvel at the particularly effective use of close ups, but one of the most startling aspects is the use of sound, how there are so many street scenes with no natural sound, something very prevalent in filmmaking today, instead there are eloquent jazz passages to fill the silence or sufficient quiet to “hear” what they are saying to each other, while at other times conversations struggle to be heard over the noise of the room, which is one of the key elements of the film, as these characters are continually striving for a level of understanding they haven’t reached yet.  Amusingly, by the time Cassavetes made HUSBANDS, his characters would fly to the other end of the earth in search of finding something to say.  The film won the Critics Award at the 1960 Venice Film Festival and drew the attention of major studios, offering Cassavetes opportunities to make Too Late Blues (1961) and A Child Is Waiting (1963), both of which failed both critically and financially, where in the latter, Cassavetes was fired before completing the film, eventually placed in the hands of Stanley Kramer to reshoot and recut the film.  But like Hugh, those films brought in paychecks, as did his continuing acting work in mainstream films, all so he could make the kind of films he wanted to make in his own characteristic style. 

What can you say about Cassavetes?  He’s a director that evolved out of a love of actors and what they could bring to the screen.  To Cassavetes the actor’s performances were more important even than the director himself, as a film is a composite of multiple forces and ideas, all moving in different directions, each with different responsibilities.  But onscreen, the director has an opportunity to create something meaningful by having actors come to life in front of the camera, where their lives can connect with the audience if they are believable and feel like real life.  This means no phony performances, no method acting in front of the camera, simply characters naturally being themselves onscreen, where the job of the actors is to find and honestly identify with the character they’re playing.  What this likely means is that actors have to live with their roles for awhile in real life, where they don’t break character, where they explore what possibilities unfold in differing situations, usually rehearsing for months with other actors in workshops until certain characters and scenes develop.  In this manner Cassavetes scripted his films, as they evolved out of rehearsals.  The jazz soundtrack by Charles Mingus and his saxophonist Shafi Hadi is immensely significant, as this film grew out of the postwar 40’s and 50’s, a golden age in hard driving Bebop jazz, characterized by uptempo virtuoso performances of recognizable melodies followed by improvisations on the original theme.  It was an energetic style of music that brought together people of all races, including Beats, where many of the most celebrated jazz artists of the era were black, though certainly not exclusively, and the audiences that adored them were an eclectic group that came from all walks of life, all drawn to that special feeling discovered in a more liberating and spacious style of music.  Much has been made of the film’s closing title sequence, “The film you have just seen is an improvisation,” where many get the idea that the film was unscripted and simply improvised on the spot.  Cassavetes, however, was a stickler for writing meticulously composed scripts, where like the jazz performances the film emulates, there are stated ideas and themes, followed by spontaneous emotional eruptions which may as well be the improvisations. 

The idea for SHADOWS grew out of Cassavetes’ acting workshops in New York, where in the mid 50’s he and theater director Burt Lane (actress Diane Lane’s father) founded the Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop.  From the Short Stack: Ray Carney on John ... - Slant Magazine  Matt Zoller Seitz on Ray Carney’s book Cassavetes on Cassavetes, from Slant magazine, March 5, 2006:

To an interviewer who visited the workshop, Cassavetes somewhat vaguely tried to describe the classes as being designed to teach students to 'act naturally,' so that their work didn't look 'staged' or 'artificial.' He said his goal was to bring 'realism' back to acting, and that the highest compliment that could possibly be paid to one of his actors was to say that he or she didn't appear to be 'acting,' but simply 'living' his character. The journalist regarded the explanation as fairly trite until Cassavetes added that the 'artificiality' of the expression of emotion was more than a dramatic problem. It was a problem in life. The young actor argued that most lived experiences were as 'staged' and 'artificial' as most dramatic experiences, and that the real problem 'for modern man' (as Cassavetes inflatedly put it) was 'breaking free from conventions and learning how to really feel again.' It was a daring leap: lived experience could be as much a product of convention as dramatic experience, and in fact one sort of convention could be the subject of the other. it was the first and most succinct statement of the subject of Shadows and of all Cassavetes' later work.

In particular, Cassavetes was displeased with Method actors, especially Actor’s Studio founder Lee Strasberg, whose students included Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, and Jack Nicholson, where actors were encouraged to draw upon their own personal experiences.  Cassavetes believed Strasberg’s protégée’s accumulated too much power with the studio casting directors, and while they were initially seen as something of a revolutionary breakthrough, they also became factory generated products.  From the Short Stack: Ray Carney on John ... - Slant Magazine  Matt Zoller Seitz on Ray Carney’s book Cassavetes on Cassavetes, from Slant magazine, March 5, 2006:

By the mid-'50’s the Method had hardened into a received style that was as rigid, unimaginative and boring as the styles it had replaced ten years earlier. The slouch, shuffle, furrow and stammer had been turned into recipes for profundity. The actor filled the character up with his own self-indulgent emotions and narcissistic fantasies…Normal, healthy, extroverted social and sexual expression between men and women dropped out of drama. Inward-turning neuroticism became equated with truth. The result was lazy, sentimental acting.

Using money he had earned from the Johnny Staccato (1959-60) television series, Cassavetes enlisted the actors from his workshop along with more lightweight and mobile 16 mm cameras and took to the streets of New York, where the initial shoot, “entirely spontaneous and improvised,” took ten weeks, from February to May in 1957.  Cassavetes also decided to plug his movie idea on the radio, which produced surprising results, from Cassavetes on Cassavetes: The Making of Shadows by Ray Carney:

I was going on Jean Shepherd's Night People radio show, because he had plugged Edge of the City, and I wanted to thank him for it. I told Jean about the piece we had done, and how it could be a good film. I said, "Wouldn't it be terrific if [ordinary] people could make movies, instead of all these Hollywood big-wigs who are only interested in business and how much the picture was going to gross and everything?" And he asked if I thought I'd be able to raise the money for it." If people really want to see a movie about people," I answered, "they should just contribute money." For a week afterwards, money came in. At the end it totaled $2,500. And we were committed to start a film. One soldier showed up with five dollars after hitchhiking 300 miles to give it to us. And some really weird girl came in off the street; she had a mustache and hair on her legs and the hair on her head was matted with dirt and she wore a filthy polka-dot dress; she was really bad. After walking into the workshop, this girl got down on her knees, grabbed my pants and said, "I listened to your program last night. You are the Messiah." Anyway, she became our sound editor and straightened out her life. In fact, a lot of people who worked on the film were people who were screwed up – and got straightened out working with the rest of us. We wouldn't take anything bigger than a five dollar bill – though once, when things looked real rough, we did cash a $100 check from Josh Logan.

But we recorded most of Shadows in a dance studio with Bob Fosse and his group dancing above our heads, and we were shooting this movie. So I never considered the sound. We didn't even have enough money to print it, to hear how bad it was. So when we came out, we had Sinatra singing upstairs, and all kinds of boom, dancing feet above us. And that was the sound of the picture. So we spent hours, days, weeks, months, years trying to straighten out this sound. Finally, it was impossible and we just went with it. Well, when the picture opened in London they said, "This is an innovation!" You know? Innovation! We killed ourselves to try to ruin that innovation!

Shooting without permits, running cables and wires down the street, all designed to make quick getaways from the police if needed, Cassavetes invented a kind of guerrilla shooting inside restaurants, looking out their windows onto the street, or capturing the street activity in various parts of New York City.  SHADOWS was initially screened in November 1958, when the film had three free midnight screenings, catching the eye of Village Voice film critic Jonas Mekas, one of the leading advocates of American avant-garde cinema, who immediately championed the film, calling it a “spontaneous cinema” masterpiece, “the most frontier-breaking American feature film in at least a decade…More than any other recent American film, (it) presents contemporary reality in a fresh and unconventional manner. The improvisation, spontaneity, and free inspiration that are almost entirely lost in most films from an excess of professionalism are fully used in this film.”  From Cassavetes on Cassavetes: The Making of Shadows by Ray Carney:

I went to a theater-owner friend of mine and I said, "Look, we want to show our film and we can fill this theater." It was the Paris Theater in New York and 600 people filled that theater and we turned away another 400 people at the door. About 15 minutes into the film the people started to leave. And they left. And they left! And I began perspiring and the cast was getting angry. We all sat closer and closer together and pretty soon there wasn't anyone in the theater! I think there was one critic in the theater, one critic who was a friend of ours, who walked over to us and said, "This is the most marvelous film I've ever seen in my life!" And I said, "I don't want to hit you right now. I'm a little uptight, not feeling too hot and none of us are, so" And he said, "No. This is really a very good film." So, like all failures, you get a sense of humor about it and you go out and spend the night – when it's bad enough, and this was so bad that it couldn't be repaired.

I could see the flaws in Shadows myself: It was a totally intellectual film – and therefore less than human. I had fallen in love with the camera, with technique, with beautiful shots, with experimentation for its own sake. All I did was exploiting film technique, shooting rhythms, using large lenses – shooting through trees, and windows. It had a nice rhythm to it, but it had absolutely nothing to do with people. Whereas you have to create interest in your characters because this is what audiences go to see. The film was filled with what you might call "cinematic virtuosity" – for its own sake; with angles and fancy cutting and a lot of jazz going on in the background. But the one thing that came at all alive to me after I had laid it aside a few weeks was that just now and again the actors had survived all my tricks. But this did not often happen! They barely came to life.

Cassavetes, however, was not interested in making an overly intellectual, avant-garde film, but wanted to connect with the audience, so he made an adjustment and recalled the actors, reshooting much of the movie again in two weeks around February, 1959, this time adhering to a script while still capturing the feel of spontaneity.  However, while he kept about half of the original footage in the revised film, the earlier version has remained a source of controversy.  When SHADOWS opened commercially in New York in March 1961, a month after BREATHLESS, Mekas was appalled, calling this new effort  “a bad commercial film with everything that I was praising completely destroyed.”  Cassavetes countered, however, claiming his final cut was in “no way a concession and…a film far superior to the first.”  While all prints of the original version were believed lost, in 2004 Boston University professor Ray Carney, author of Cassavetes On Cassavetes and leading Cassavetes scholar, announced the discovery of the original print, which consisted of two reels of 16mm black and white film with optical sound, apparently spending years with the daughter of a downtown Manhattan junk dealer who discovered it abandoned in the New York subway.  The 78-minute film played at the 2004 Rotterdam Film Festival, some 45 years after the original midnight screenings, having developed the reputation of the ‘holy grail’ of independent cinema, but hasn’t been seen since.  Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes’ leading lady and surviving spouse, the executor of his estate, claims the film is stolen property and threatened legal action to prevent the first version from being screened, contending that the SHADOWS film her husband released to the public is the only one that should ever be seen.  SHADOWS remains today a seminal work, the most influential independently produced film of its era, a “virtual breakthrough” for American alternative cinema, giving rise to a group of independent filmmakers that still thrive today making often less technically polished, less commercial, low-budget alternatives to bigger budgeted Hollywood studio releases.