Peter Falk month: A Woman Under the Influence

A retrospective by Brooks Rich

Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands are Nick and Mabel Longhetti, a middle class couple living in Los Angeles. They come to the agreement that Mabel might have mental issues and Nick has her committed. While she's gone Nick struggles to be a father to their three children and then he and Mabel struggle to find her place in the world when she is released.

The year is 1974 and we're fully into the evolution from old Hollywood, the glitz and glamour of the studio system to new Hollywood, where film became grittier and the Auters of the '70s, filmmakers like Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, were changing film forever, pushing the prestige films in a grittier director or creating the blockbuster. Then we had filmmakers like John Cassavetes pushing the indie film to new heights.

A Woman Under the Influence is very much a smaller film in the grand scheme of the '70s. Cassavetes will be a filmmaker who will get their own month at one point. I think he is one of the most important filmmakers of the '70s due to what he's doing for the independent and smaller film. He's channeling French New Wave and Italian Neorealism to paint a realistic portrait of living in middle class '70s America. We'll discuss that more when we get to his month. I want to save some of the analysis for then.

For now I want to focus on Falk as Nick, the struggling but loving husband in this film. Falk brings his usual charm to this role and at times yes, he might be falling back on being Columbo. It's 1974. He's firmly in the middle of the shows first run. But Falk is also a great everyman. He can pull off the role of a normal guy. The chemistry between him and Rowlands feels real. That's also key with Cassavetes's films. It feels real. This is not glamorous Hollywood. These are real people.

I think of all of Cassavetes work with Falk in this era this one is the best. I think Falk is at his most realistic here but also can stretch himself. However I would say it's more of a film for cinephiles as are most of Cassavetes films.

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