Gena Rowlands, who gave a legendary performance as the neglected and underappreciated housewife in John Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence,” died Wednesday at her California home. She was 94.
If you’ve never seen Rowlands as Mabel, a woman slowly crossing the line into madness, then get right to it. Written and directed by husband Cassavetes, Rowlands’ work in ‘Woman’ might very well be the gold standard in acting. I don't think there’s been a better female performance committed to film. Falconetti in “The Passion of Joan of Arc” runs a very close second.
Much like Joaquin Phoenix’s work in “The Master,” Rowlands’ demeanor in “Woman Under the Influence” evades labelling. She created a character that was so tactile, so multifaceted that you forgot you were watching a performance. Her Mabel was both beautiful and adorable, a loving mother, but also a very troubled, disturbed and damaged woman.
Of course, although it would come to define her career, Rowlands wasn’t just about this film and that performance. She collaborated with Cassavates on 10 films, some of them seminal, especially “Faces,” “Opening Night,” and “Love Streams.” Though she also worked with other filmmakers, like Paul Schrader (“Light of Day”) and Woody Allen (“Another Woman”), her work with Cassavetes is what she’ll most be remembered for.
Rowlands once noted that her husband “loved actors, and he had a particular interest in women. Women in movies, I should say.” Rowlands told THR‘s Scott Feinberg in 2015. “He was interested in women’s problems and where they are in society and what they have to overcome. He offered me some really wonderful parts.”
Alongside Cassavetes, who was a pioneer of American independent cinema, as he often financed his own films, Rowlands ended up changing the language of film performance with her artistically freeing delivery, pioneering a style that’s been touted as “realism-meets-vaudevillian acting” and presenting a range of feeling that only she was able to access.
Director Sidney Lumet once said of Rowlands: “The highest compliment I can pay to her — to anyone — is that the talent frightens me, making me aware of the lack of it in so many and the power that accrues to those who have it and use it well. And the talent educates and illuminates. She is admirable, which can be said of only a few of us.”
Younger moviegoers might, sadly, only recognize Rowlands as the dementia-ridden Allie in “The Notebook,” directed by her son Nick Cassavetes. Ironically, much like her character in that film, she ended up battling Alzheimer’s disease during the final years of her life.