Key Genres: Drama,
Psychological Drama,
Ensemble Film
Key
Collaborators: Gena
Rowlands (Leading Player), Seymour Cassel (Character Player), Fred Draper (Character
Player), Al Ruban (Producer/Cinematographer/Editor), Peter
Falk (Leading Character Player), Bo
Harwood (Composer), Phedon
Papamichael (Production Designer), Ben Gazzara (Leading Player), Tom Cornwall (Editor),
Val Avery (Leading Character Player)
Highly Recommended: Shadows
(1959), Husbands (1970), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Love
Streams (1984)
Recommended: Faces
(1968), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980)
1,000
Greatest Films: Shadows
(1960), Faces (1968), Husbands (1970), A Woman Under the Influence
(1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Opening Night (1977), Love
Streams (1984)
"The
director himself provided the essential key to his approach when
he said, "I am more interested in the people who work with
me than in the film itself, or in cinema." That's perhaps
why his films are further than most from the conventions of art
or entertainment, but at their very best moments are closer than
most to truth, or at least to the subjective reality of its
participants. Critics and audiences either love or hate
Cassavetes' free-wheeling work. His films are as disturbing as
they are erratic, leaving no one indifferent." - (The
MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994)
"Actor-director
John Cassavetes is remembered as the godfather of American
independent film-makers. Although Shadows (1959), his
breakthrough film, was not the first American movie outside the
system, it became a rallying point for future generations...Cassavetes
was often labelled an improvisational film-maker, but his films
were almost entirely scripted. Yet he had a preference for
documentary-style camerawork and was obsessed with human
interaction." -
Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)
"The
amalgam of improvisational acting, hand-held camera work, grainy
stock, loose editing, and threadbare plot give his films a
texture of recreated rather than heightened reality, often
imbuing them with a feeling of astonishing psychodramatic
intensity as characters confront each other and lay bare their
souls." - Bill
Wine (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998)
"There's
a difference between ad-libbing and improvising. And there's a
difference between not knowing what to do and just saying
something. Or making choices as an actor. As a writer also, as a
person who's making a film, as a cameraman, everything is a
choice. And it seems to me I don't really have to direct anyone
or write down that somebody's getting drunk; all I have to do is
say that there's a bottle there and put a bottle there and then
they're going to get drunk." - John
Cassavetes (Directing the Film, 1976)
"People who are making
films today are too concerned with mechanics - technical things
instead of feeling." - John
Cassavetes (1980)
