Love Streams

LOVE STREAMS         A                  

USA  (141 mi)  1984  d:  John Cassavetes

I’ve never seen an exploding helicopter.  I’ve never seen anyone go and blow somebody’s head off.  So why should I make films about them?  But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest way, I’ve seen people withdraw, I’ve seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope, behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I’ve myself done all these things.  So I can understand them...What we are saying is so gentle.  It’s gentleness.  We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems.

—John Cassavetes   

Very few great artists, other than those named Mozart or Beethoven, save what is arguably their greatest creation for their last and final work, where a gaunt Cassavetes makes his last great film, written immediately after playing in Paul Mazursky’s film, TEMPEST (1982), filmed after he had already begun to be ill with liver damage.  LOVE STREAMS is Cassavetes’ Prospero, a farewell to his art, using dozens of references from his earlier films.  Like Faces (1968), all the interiors are filmed in the actual Cassavetes household, adding a documentary element of family photos and portraits lining the walls, interestingly containing no hand-held camera work, a staple in nearly all his earlier films, yet this may be his most intimate film.  Unlike most married couples that strive for a sense of balance and security, Cassavetes and Rowlands continued to struggle and evolve creatively directly in front of the camera during the course of their lives, an outrageously courageous and highly original form of personal expression, with Cassavetes waving goodbye to Gena Rowlands, and goodbye to the audience in the final shot.  With it, a career of risk taking comes to a climax in this rich, original, emotionally immense film about a brother who cannot love and a sister who loves too much.  The film is adapted from a series of three plays called Three Plays of Love and Hate, with Cassavetes writing the initial segment Knives, The Third Day Comes was written by Ted Allan, while the third Love Streams was supposedly co-written by Cassavetes and Ted Allan, though according to Allan it was almost all the work of Cassavetes, though both are credited with the screenplay.  Cassavetes characters insist upon their relevance, they demand to be heard, even when they don't have a clue what they're about to say, like the befuddled Rowlands who loses her daughter in the opening divorce proceedings, something inconceivable to her, as no one could love her more. But she can't find the words and her loss is immeasurable, so she spends the rest of the film trying to fill the empty void from that missing love.

Initially the film follows the separate lives of Robert and Sarah, Cassavetes and Rowlands, parallel lives of loneliness and loss, where Sarah loses her 13-year old daughter in a divorce, losing her companionship and love, trying to introduce love into the legal proceedings, but there’s simply no place for it.  Looking largely disheveled for the first half of the picture, Sarah is a natural extension of Mabel from A Woman Under the Influence (1974), a hyper-emotive woman who tends to get carried away with herself, growing deliriously happy or utterly despondent.  Referred to a psychiatrist, she attempts to explain to him, “Love is a stream.  It’s continuous.  It does not stop,” to which he replies, “It does stop,” but she insists otherwise, which is the heart of her personality, driven to be liked and appreciated, refusing to accept the middle ground of mediocrity.  Recommending that she take a trip to Europe and meet people, the film turns comically hilarious when we see the mountainous pile of luggage she drags behind.  Robert lives in a dream house on top of a Hollywood hill reachable only by a steep, winding incline making a successful living writing sex books about women.  We see him visit a gay nightclub picking up Diahnne Abbott after hearing the club’s singer doing a sultry rendition of “Kinky Reggae” Love streams - kinky reggae - YouTube (2:10).  Robert never sleeps alone, filling his house with beautiful young bimbos, where sex is all that is real.  Life is one long champagne party of women and sex, where there are literally several carfuls of call girls who spend the weekend, most of the time amusing themselves however they wish, as only one or two are ever with Robert, who occasionally takes the time to get to know them, actually asking probing questions which are beyond their years.       

In something of a surprise, mixing up the drunken revelry is an 8-year old kid Albie (Jakob Shaw) arriving on his doorstep, who turns out to be a son he never knew existed, whose mother says she’ll come back for him the next day.  Needless to say, Albie is terrified at the drinking and lewd behavior going on, so Robert clears the house of everyone else while the two get acquainted, ridiculously plying him with beer, offering him the fatherly advice that by the time he’s 14 he should hitchhike across the country and discover “real” people, “not these guys out here with their suits and ties, but real men.”  What distinguishes this film is the heavy mix of humor along with the depth of realism and warmth of the characters.  What do you do when you’re finally alone with a newly discovered son?  Take him to Vegas, obviously, where you go out partying all night leaving him alone in a hotel room, basically quivering in fright.  But before they leave, Sarah is greeted affectionately on Robert’s doorstep with her boatload of luggage that arrives in two cabs.  There’s a wonderfully extended ambiguity about their relationship, as we don’t discover the truth until about 90 minutes into the film.  Needless to say, the Vegas trip is a disaster, culminating in what could almost be described as spectacle, which is so bizarre in its own uncompromising way that Robert’s most embarrassing moment turns into something poignant and perversely comedic at the same time.

One of the more beautiful sequences involves Robert’s date with Diahnne Abbott’s mother Margaret, repaying earlier kindness, where they dance and drink champagne in her living room, where she’s treated like a queen to the music of Jack Sheldon singing “Almost in Love With You,” Love Streams 1984 - Fragmento ("Almost In Love With You") YouTube (2:53), a Bo Harwood song also heard playing in an early bar sequence featuring the suave and debonair Ben Gazarra as Cosmo Vittelli in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), given a completely different texture, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie - 1976 - Fragmento ("Almost In Love With You") YouTube (2:10), but Cosmo similarly flirts with his girl friend Rachel’s (Azizi Johari) mother, where in each instance the mother used is the real life mother.  Returning home to a quieter, darker house, Cassavetes gently tells Rowlands, “Life is a series of suicides, divorces, broken promises, children smashed, whatever,” which is not in any way meant to be downbeat or maudlin, but simply an acceptance of reality.  From that, Sarah gets the idea to go bowling dressed in a classy black sequined dress and heels, where her response to the desk clerk’s “How are you?” is simply classic, as she’s bound and determined to give the man an honest answer, most of which is simply contorted facial expressions searching for the truth.  Of course, she’s a sensation wearing no shoes on lane 13, meeting Ken (John Roselius), returning home with renewed exuberance, where the two of them sit down and discuss the idea of love as art.  Sarah, however, refuses to abandon her romantic dreams about love, and in a brilliant conversational climax, defends her ex-husband, who no longer loves her and is giving her nothing but grief, telling Robert, “We’re talking about a man who put food on the table, who held my hand in the hospital, who cried when his baby was born.  Where were you?” 

Sarah’s way of providing balance to their lives is returning in a cab one afternoon with two miniature horses, a goat, a parrot, chickens, a duck, and a dog named Jim, but swoons in a spell when Robert doesn’t seem to appreciate the gesture.  Feeling miserable and disconsolate, barely able to move, Sarah has two extraordinary dream sequences while a storm rages outside and Robert, the Ancient Mariner, lovingly gathers up all the animals, providing them a shelter from the storm.  The first dream is one of Rowlands’ greatest scenes, tragically obsessed with the idea of making her daughter and ex-husband happy, she performs a burlesque comedy routine, trying every cheap vaudeville gag, fake mustard and ketchup, water spurting out of flowers and pens, fake eyeballs on springs, funny glasses, but gets nothing, despite the fact she is simply sensational, she gets no reaction from either one of them.  Her second dream is more surreal, LOVE STREAMS de John Cassavetes - Extrait - Le reve merveilleux de Sarah (Gena Rowlands) YouTube (4:58), an intriguing Stephen Sondheim style song staged like something out of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979), a small autobiographical operetta where her daughter’s feelings are being tugged back and forth between the mother and father, with Sarah on one side of the stage and her husband on the other, the spotlight shines on Sarah in a haunting, classical image of beauty and motherly love, where her daughter is seen as one of the dancing Degas ballet girls. 

Meanwhile, Cassavetes comically gathering all the animals is a bit like Rowlands’ earlier luggage scenes, where they are carrying their emotional baggage like an added weight on their shoulders.  Cassavetes, however, has the presence of mind to use the back door for comedy, so reminiscent of WC Fields’ “Not a fit night out for man or beast” in 1933 The Fatal Glass Of Beer (W. C. Fields) - YouTube (18:32), as each time they open it to the raging storm outside, Robert stumbles in out of the deluge with another animal.  Despite the howling storm, Sarah resolves to make something of her life right then and there, claiming sudden family clarity, not waiting another moment, while Robert urges her to never go back to any man that doesn’t love her and to stay and live with him.  But to the music of Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh’s “Where Are You” MILDRED BAILEY - Where Are You (1937) - YouTube  (3:15), “Must I go on pretending, where is that happy ending, where are you?” Rowlands is whisked away in a cab as Robert waves goodbye to his sister, framed in a windowsill, his image distorted by the rain.  Of  interest, there is no trace of a play in this film, arguably Cassavetes’ best and most accessible film, no dialogue driven moments, instead the occasional improvisational bursts offer needed energy to Cassavetes’ free-wheeling style, briskly moving between sequences where both Cassavetes and Rowlands offer such rare emotional authenticity, creating a cinematic farewell that will forever be beautiful and heartbreaking.  

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE       B             

USA  (112 mi)  1974  d:  Martin Scorsese

A change of pace for Scorsese, his first Hollywood studio production while making one of the few women’s pictures in his career, along with Boxcar Bertha (1972), New York, New York (1977), and THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993), where Ellen Burstyn won an Academy Award as Best Actress for her role.  Burstyn had creative control of the movie from the start, as Warner Brothers was so impressed with her work in THE EXORCIST (1973) that they kept sending her scripts and gave her complete control over her next film.  According to Burstyn, “It was early in the Woman’s Movement, and we were all just waking up and having a look at the pattern of our lives and wanting it to be different… I wanted to make a different kind of film, a film from a woman’s point of view, but a woman that I recognized, that I knew, and not just myself, but my friends, what we were all going through at the time. So my agent found Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”  The opening sequence is one of the most remarkable in Scorsese’s entire career, spending two and a half times more money just for the opening set ($85,000) than he did for his entire first film, where after spending weeks building it, on the day of the shoot he was told by a child welfare worker that the child actress (Mia Bendixsen) was not allowed to speak any profanity, which is the kicker line in the opening sequence.  Fortunately Scorsese already recorded an earlier screen test shot, which is the one used in the film.  Opening in a WIZARD OF OZ (1939) dream world with a William Cameron Menzies style tinted red sky that accompanies a young girl’s dreams of becoming a star, that quickly cuts from this highly stylized, artificially illuminated fantasy childhood into a spectacular outdoor crane shot that purposefully jolts the audience ahead 27 years, adding some raucous energy from Mott the Hoople that much of the rest of the film lacks, where the would-be star finds herself sitting at a sewing machine, already consumed by the boring reality of day to day existence Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore -- (Movie Clip ... YouTube (4:00).  What’s immediately apparent is the film is not written by Scorsese, so it lacks much of the personal insight and fresh spontaneity of Mean Streets (1973), feeling like a more generic story that attempts to play upon populist themes.  Being a Scorsese film, however, there are highly inventive musical choices, well developed characters, and some stunning visual composition, again shot by Kent Wakeford in his last film working with the director.   

While some may find this film refreshingly honest, it’s also a film that pushes all the buttons it intended to push, as it feels at times like a movie with a feminist social agenda, much like Jill Clayburgh in Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman (1978), while at other times it’s much more risky in the way it freely allows characters to evolve naturally, where they don’t hide the growing pains of attempting to deal with the chaos in their lives.  At times it feels overwrought, where the weight of the world always falls upon Burstyn’s shoulders, where her performance often feels too showy, which is highly unusual for her, as after a long career in television, she made quite an impact with her brilliantly understated performances in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971) and THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (1972), where she tends to exhibit wise-beyond-her-years, rock steady characteristics even as her world is falling apart.  Here, there are plenty of scenes where she just lets it go.  Trapped in a dysfunctional marriage with an emotionally stunted husband (Billy Green Bush), the man is just impossible to please, despite Alice’s most determined efforts, where apparently fighting is part of their family life, each with one another.  When her husband dies in a traffic fatality, it’s as if a part of her world had been sucked away, as she was used to relying upon her husband to pay the bills, sacrificing her earlier dreams of being a singer, as her husband didn’t want his wife to work.  One of the more memorable early sequences is seeing Burstyn with Lelia Goldoni as Bea, from Cassavetes’ SHADOWS (1959), onscreen together as neighbors and best friends, as Goldoni happened to be one of Burstyn’s real-life best friends at the time, so their affectionate camaraderie feels authentic.  Nonetheless, Alice and her 11-year old son Tommy (Alfred Lutter) hop in a car and hit the road, with recollections that her happiest times were in her home town of Monterey, California, thinking she could revive her singing career.  But California is quite a distance, and that costs money, where most of the film was actually shot on location in Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona, so she doesn’t get very far when she has to get up her nerve and look for a job, culminating in this breathy but intoxicatingly feminine audition which lands her a job Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974, Martin Scorsese) Pian  YouTube (3:37).

Fresh from Scorsese’s last few films, Harvey Keitel makes another memorable appearance here as Ben, a regular customer who takes a shine to Alice, devoting plenty of time and attention that she initially deflects, but she eventually warms up to the guy, even as she knows little about him.  No one could possibly anticipate just how far Keitel takes this film over the edge, as it’s a brilliantly explosive scenario that comes to a quick end as they hightail it out of town, landing in Phoenix where Alice reluctantly gets a job as a waitress in Mel & Ruby’s Café, aka: Mel’s Diner (since Ruby’s long gone), a real-life diner located at 1747 NW Grand Avenue that is still in operation in Phoenix, the greasy spoon diner which was the setting for the spin-off TV series called Alice (1976 – 1985), where Vic Tayback plays Mel the cook in both.  Diane Ladd as the foul-mouthed and sexually charged Flo, and Valerie Curtin as the always spaced out Vera, play the other two waitresses, where after a brief battle of wills, Flo and Alice bury the hatchet and become friends, beautifully expressed here in a near surreal visualization Ellen Burstyn and Diane Ladd in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Any YouTube (1:45).  Add to the mix Kris Kristofferson as David, a local rancher who becomes Alice’s regular customer and new love interest, while also bursting onto the scene is a young child actress named Jodie Foster, an iconic figure from Scorsese’s next film TAXI DRIVER (1976), playing young Audrey Jodie Foster in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) YouTube (4:37), a local girl that schools Tommy on how to shoplift and drink cheap Ripple wine, who after an arrest utters the memorable phrase “So long, suckers!” as her mother embarrassingly drags her out of the police station.  One of the more novel dynamics of the picture is the mother and son relationship, where the child must be devastated at being cooped up in a motel room all day during the summer months while his mother goes off to work, which is a nice contrast with the mother’s annoyance at being imprisoned by a small child who relentlessly demands all of her attention over and over again.  Although Burstyn has an achingly real sequence in a disarming moment where she acts out a childhood vaudeville routine, Keitel, Diane Ladd and Jodie Foster add needed spice and personality to this film, where the secondary characters are often more fun than the leads, where their spark and originality make this more than a conscious raising film coming early in the Women’s Movement of the 60’s and 70’s.  This is a film where women as well as men should re-examine their own lives, change or re-evaluate their perspectives, and reflect upon the old values of compliance and obedience in the role of a dutiful wife.  While the film does emphasize women’s issues, shifting to a position of empowerment, it’s certainly not a radical film in any respect, especially with such a conventional (or cop out) ending, much to the disappointment of many, feeling exactly like the end of An Unmarried Woman, where in both, despite being labeled feminist or women’s films, women were not yet ready to completely let go of the idea of needing a man.         

An Unmarried Woman

AN UNMARRIED WOMAN        B                 

USA  (124 mi)  1978  d:  Paul Mazursky

Something of a bridge from the radical 60’s women’s liberation movement to the mainstream, where much of the mood and cheesy music from Bill Conti are reminiscent of the Mary Tyler Moore TV Show (1970 – 1977), which features a single woman capable of solving her own problems and making her own way in the world, usually stopping to help out others along the way, yet feeling little satisfaction in her role.  Jill Clayburgh as Erica is the focus of nearly every shot, where her seemingly secure upper class marriage of seventeen years hits the skids one day when her husband Martin, Michael Murphy, announces he’s fallen in love with a 19-year old woman he met while buying a shirt at Bloomingdales.  What should feel ridiculous becomes the centerpoint of the film, as Erica’s world crumbles, where she’s all of a sudden alone in the world.  It’s a stark and complicated revelation made even more intensely personal from Clayburgh’s iconic portrayal of loneliness and confusion along with deep seeded layers of contemptuous guilt, where she oozes anger and resentment at being betrayed.  Their fifteen year old daughter Patti (Lisa Lucas) finds her dad immensely hateful afterwards and the two have similar abandonment and anger issues.  While Erica has a part time job at an art gallery, she depends on continued financial support from her ex-husband, as she’s used to living in an upper echelon, choice corner high rise apartment with wall to wall window views on two sides offering a panoramic New York City landscape.  As they sit and have cereal in the morning and attempt to lead a normal life, the audience can’t help but be mesmerized and a bit overwhelmed by the stunning view out the window, one of the best ever seen in the movies. 

Listed as Ebert’s #1 film of the year Siskel and Ebert Top Ten Lists (1969-1998), offering plenty of intelligence and humor with a few bits of social realism thrown in, it’s hard to feel sympathy for such outrageously fortunate people of wealth, who have been protected all their lives from the problems of the real world.  Almost anyone would be perfectly willing to exchange places with her, man or no man.  When the film was released, Erica and her life of privilege continues to represent the world of the establishment and hasn’t a clue what people were fighting for during the social movements of the 60’s, yet she reaps the benefits from the struggles of others as she’s fortunate enough to have options that weren’t available in previous decades.  Despite railing against all men, Erica has a Sex and the City (1998 – 2004) support group of 3 other women her age that meet every week, usually over lunch and cocktails, where they commiserate over their middle age emptiness, lack of self-esteem, and especially their problematic sex lives.  While they offer friendship, she’s obviously missing the central purpose of her life, which has been defined by taking care of her husband and daughter, never once thinking of herself.  When it’s finally all about her, she hasn’t got a clue what to do, so she finds a female shrink, Penelope Russianoff, which was actually unusual for the times.   People might question the advice given, as the therapist urges her to get back out there and re-establish contact with other men.  Since her treatment was broadening her view of herself and redefining her own sense of independence, this might seem like a contradiction, but it’s based on the reality that women have sexual needs as well, so long as they establish them on their own terms. What’s unfortunate in this film is there are no likeable characters along with a clearly drawn line finding the husband completely at fault, which allows the wife to flaunt her superiority even as she flounders in misery and self disgust.        

Centered so much on the streets of New York City, this bears some resemblance to Woody Allen films, made a year after ANNIE HALL (1977), especially since Michael Murphy was so prominent in MANHATTAN (1979), as this film similarly features the open expanse of street scenes, bridges, skylines and panoramic views of the city, where the cinematography by Arthur J. Ornitz immerses the viewer into the vitality of the city.  When Erica begins making the rounds on her own, it at first feels cheap and pathetic, right out of LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR (1977), like meeting all the wrong people in the wrong places, where her fumbling awkwardness and sexual inhibitions reveal her repressive sense of confinement set against these spacious art studios which also offer spectacular views of the city.  When she meets Alan Bates, a successful artist from London, this feels like an idyllic, happily ever after version of reality and a stark contrast from the more difficult idea of discovering her self worth and redefining her sense of independence on her own, as once more she’s defining her happiness through a relationship with another man.  While Erica’s occasional grating on one’s nerves and somewhat berating sense of self justification makes it clear she’s made some progress, it’s not a radical shift to feminism, instead she simply takes what she likes from the movement, as her new agenda is once more structured upon the age old principles of wealth and monetary support to achieve happiness, and while she’s progressed to not jump head over heels into another dependent marriage where she’s just an extension of someone else’s personality, it’s also clear this is not the revelation it intended to be, as her happiness is defined by the prince in shining armor idealization, as someone else is coming to her rescue to make her happy and whole again.  Unfortunately, if this man dropped her, as her husband did, she’d be right back at the same starting point and is relying heavily upon the hope that this new guy is somehow different.  While the budding relationship is more ambiguous, where the lines are not so clearly drawn, it’s clear that she’s simply fallen for another guy, and where she may have more self respect and is not dropping everything to run away with him, she remains the picture of an overly self-centered rich bitch, a pampered New York City woman of privilege who is just as dependent upon his wealth and financial security to lead the kind of life to which she’s accustomed.