Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 08/28/22

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, August 28, 2022

Husbands (John Cassavetes, 1970)

Cast: Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Lee Wright, Noelle Kao, John Cullers, Meta Shaw Stevens, Leola Harlow, Delores Delmar, Eleanor Zee, Claire Mallis, Peggy Lashbrook. Screenplay: John Cassavetes. Cinematography: Victor J. Kemper. Film editing: John Cassavetes.

There are those who think Husbands is a masterpiece and those who think it’s a self-indulgent mess. While I incline to the latter opinion, I’m willing to hear what those who admire it have to say. Cassavetes is a favorite of those who admire his uncompromising individuality as a filmmaker, and he never displayed it more thoroughly than in Husbands. He compiled months of raw footage shot in New York and London, which he then submitted to an editor, who made what previewers though was a superbly commercial comedy about suburban husbands on a spree. But that wasn’t what Cassavetes wanted, so he took the footage back and edited it into a wholly idiosyncratic film with flashes of comedy but extended scenes of pain. It opens with still photographs, snapshots of some family gathering attended by four buddies: Harry (Ben Gazzara), Archie (Peter Falk), Gus (Cassavetes), and Stuart (David Rowlands). But Stuart appears in the fim only in these photos because he’s dead: The actual movie starts with his funeral, after which Harry, Archie, and Gus express their grief by going on an extended bender, which eventually winds up with the three carousing with any women they can pick up in a London hotel. I can see what Cassavetes is up to with the film: a searching look at the 14-year-old boy in every middle-aged man. And I have to admit that it works. But is it a satisfactory movie? Why do scenes like the beer-sodden song contest in a bar, and the consequent vomiting scene in the bar’s men’s room go on so long? Does Cassavetes not trust the viewer to get the message? Admirers of the film argue that this is exactly the point: the message is in the experience of enduring these and other scenes. We squirm in our seats because Cassavetes wants us to. But is that art or torture?