Perhaps we’re not doing any favors for John Cassavetes or his filmswhen we call him the “father” or “godfather” of independent cinema. Today, the word has been devalued by the fact that these so-called “independents” are actually smaller-budgeted films funded by—or acquisitions released by—boutique divisions of large studios, the studios themselves being divisions of large-scale multinational corporations.
Coincidentally, Cassavetes’ untimely death at age 59 on February 3, 1989, came just two weeks after the Sundance Film Festival premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s independently made Sex, Lies, and Videotape, a watershed event for American indies and Sundance. Sadly, there remains few links between the defiantly personal films of Cassavetes and the avalanche of low-budget, yet decidedly non-personal efforts calculated to appeal to mainstream tastes and acquire distribution that appear every year at Sundance.
An accomplished actor with experience in film, theater, and television before he became a writer-director, Cassavetes was a born rebel who challenged the studios’ and the audience’s expectations and understanding of cinema at every opportunity; his films felt loose and improvised (although they were usually tightly scripted); they rarely seemed to adhere to the traditional rules of “storytelling”; and they focused on human behavior that was not always easy to accept at first glance.
Even though Cassavetes independently financed five of his features (three of which he also distributed on his own), by labeling him the “patron saint” of indies, we do a disservice to some of the marvelous features Cassavetes made within the studio system, like Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz, and Too Late Blues. Not to mention that calling him the “inventor” of independent cinema is as misleading as saying that sound cinema begins with The Jazz Singer, and unfair to filmmakers like Morris Engel and Lionel Rogosin, who preceded Cassavetes and whose work is being shown in conjunction with this series.
“Independent” has become a, hip, identifiable genre, or worse, a brand name, but even if we accept that “true independent” filmmaking has been in decline since Cassavetes’ death, it is possible to consider his collective body of work as something other than a series of cinematic miracles, made by an angel sent from movie heaven to save us from crass commercialism. What’s more inspiring is that all of his resulting films, with all of their strengths and weaknesses, are not only honest about human relationships, but also authentic reflections of his struggles to make movies, whether or not he had the assistance of corporate funding. These films are more than the work of a true independent; they are films by an artist who was a human being.
Join us in the Dryden during May and June as we celebrate the extraordinary work of John Cassavetes. The series kicks off with a screening of his seminal first film, Shadows, showing in a newly restored 35mm print from the UCLA Film & Television Archive, followed by a discussion with film critic and former Rochesterian Marshall Fine, author of a Cassavetes biography. The centerpiece events for this series will take place the weekend of May 16–18 when Cassavetes company performers Ben Gazzara and Seymour Cassel and producer-cinematographer Al Ruban will participate in discussions following screening of Faces (another UCLA restoration), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Husbands.—Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department
For an exclusive interview with Al Ruban, please click this link, and for an interview with Seymour Cassel, follow this link.
Advance tickets for Cassavetes Weekend are available at http:// dryden.eastmanhouse.org, Museum’s admissions desk, and Dryden Theatre box office. No Take-10 tickets or passes. This film series is made possible in part through the generous support of Jacques and Dawn Lipson.
Screenings:
Wednesday, May 7 | 8 p.m.
Marshall Fine in Person!
SHADOWS (John Cassavetes, US 1959, 87 min.)
Wednesday, May 14 | 8 p.m.
TOO LATE BLUES (John Cassavetes, US 1962, 100 min.)
Cassavetes Weekend
Friday, May 16 | 8 p.m.
Seymour Cassel & Al Ruban in Person!
FACES (John Cassavetes, US 1968, 130 min.) No Take-10 tickets or passes.
Saturday, May 17 | 8 p.m.
Ben Gazzara, Seymour Cassel & Al Ruban in Person!
THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (John Cassavetes, US 1976,
109 min.) No Take-10 tickets or passes.
Sunday, May 18 | 7 p.m.
Ben Gazzara & Al Ruban in Person!
HUSBANDS (John Cassavetes, US 1970, 131 min.) No Take-10 tickets
or passes.
Wednesday, May 21 | 8 p.m.
A CHILD IS WAITING (John Cassavetes, US 1963, 102 min.)
Wednesday, May 28 | 8 p.m.
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (John Cassavetes, US 1974, 146 min.)
Wednesday, June 4 | 8 p.m.
MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ (John Cassavetes, US 1971, 114 min.)
Wednesday, June 11 | 8 p.m.
OPENING NIGHT (John Cassavetes, US 1977, 144 min.)
Wednesday, June 18 | 8 p.m.
GLORIA (John Cassavetes, US 1980, 121 min.)
Wednesday, June 25 | 8 p.m.
LOVE STREAMS (John Cassavetes, US 1984, 141 min.)
Before Cassavetes Double Feature!
Thursday, May 15
7 p.m. LITTLE FUGITIVE (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, US 1953,
75 min.) & at 8:30 p.m. ON THE BOWERY (Lionel Rogosin, US 1957, 65
min.) Two films for one admission price.
During May and June, we’ll present four highly acclaimed recent releases making their first local theatrical appearances in our Dryden Theatre, beginning with the May 10 and 11 screenings of Pere Portabella’s The Silence Before Bach. Portabella’s unique cinematic essay is a series of comic, dramatic, and documentary episodes that each pay homage to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, while collectively suggesting that modern Europe owes much more to its classical music tradition than we might expect.
Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterwork Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford, returns to the Dryden in an all-new “Final Cut” that includes newly remastered special effects and some newly shot footage. The most comprehensive version we could ever expect of this provocative and visually mind-blowing work of speculative cinema, Blade Runner: The Final Cut screens on May 24 and 25.
An unusually funny and deadpan comedy of the sexes, director Sangsoo Hong’s Woman on the Beach (screening June 13) tells the story of a self-centered film director who instigates affairs with two women, and ultimately reveals his awkward, egotistical, and chauvinistic personality. One of South Korea’s most acclaimed contemporary filmmakers, Hong’s talents suggest a Korean equivalent of Albert Brooks.
Finally, Taiwanese filmmaker Hsiao-Hsien Hou travels outside of Asia for the first time, and his resulting effort, Flight of the Red Balloon (June 28 & 29), is a delightful and moving tribute to the transformative powers of all art. Set in a gorgeous Paris, the film pays homage to Albert Lamorisse’s immortal The Red Balloon while following the story of the growing relationship between a single-mother puppeteer (Juliette Binoche) and her film student nanny (Song Fang).
Oscar®-nominated writer-director of two funny and poignant semi-autobiographical features, Tamara Jenkins will appear in the Dryden Theatre on Friday and Saturday, May 30 and 31. A graduate of New York University’s film school, Jenkins found acclaim for her 1993 short film, Family Remains, and was given special recognition by the jury at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival.
Jenkins first feature, 1998’s Slums of Beverly Hills, follows an itinerant Jewish middle-class family in the typically upscale suburbs of Los Angeles, and stars Natasha Lyonne, Alan Arkin, and Marisa Tomei. Her follow-up film, The Savages (2007), focuses on two siblings (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney) thrust into the roles of caregivers when their father (Philip Bosco) begins to succumb to dementia. The Savages earned Jenkins a Best Original Screenplay nomination at the 2008 Academy Awards®. Jenkins will visit George Eastman House on May 31 to present The Savages and Family Remains, and participate in a post-film discussion.
On May 30, Jenkins will also introduce one of the best and rarely shown films of the 1930s, Leo McCarey’s heartbreaking Make Way for Tomorrow (1937). In the movie that Orson Welles declared “could make a stone cry,” an aging couple (Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore) turn to their grown children when faced with financial problems and potential homelessness. Jenkins cites Make Way as a primary influence on The Savages. McCarey’s film also inspired director Yasujiro Ozu and screenwriter Kôgo Noda to make their celebrated masterwork, Tokyo Story (1953).
Surrounding these special events will be screenings of Slums of Beverly Hills (May 29) and Tokyo Story (June 1). No Take-10 tickets or passes will be accepted for the May 31 screening of The Savages.
One of the most fascinating and underrated actresses of her generation, Tuesday Weld (born Susan Ker Weld in New York City in 1943) first came to prominence at the age of 16 in 1959 as the scheming Thalia Menninger on the popular television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. However, she caught the attention of serious moviegoers and critics with a series of roles in feature films from the ’60s and ’70s that increasingly examined the complex and often dark shades of character that lay beneath her blonde, all-American good looks.
In June, appropriately on Tuesday evenings, we’ll present four of Tuesday Weld’s most interesting performances from this period, beginning on June 3 with The Cincinnati Kid, featuring Weld as the angelic soul fighting with bad girl Ann-Margret over poker hustler Steve McQueen. In Pretty Poison (June 10), she’s the seemingly sweet high-schooler Sue Ann, who cleverly tricks a troubled young man (Anthony Perkins) into a sinister domestic plot. Henry Jaglom, director of A Safe Place (June 17), allowed Weld to delve into her personal background to develop her character of a flower child torn between her fantasy life and her real boyfriend (Jack Nicholson). Concluding the series is Frank Perry’s adaptation of Joan Didion’s cult novel, Play it as it Lays, which reunites Weld with her Pretty Poison co-star Perkins for a twisted take on Tinseltown. Each film will be shown in new or recently struck 35mm prints.
During June in the Dryden, you’ll have a chance to experience the entire feature oeuvre of Russian filmmaker Elem Klimov; five films which include a pair of hilarious social satires and three epic-length historical dramas, almost all of which were suppressed at some point by the Soviet government.
An enormously expressive and talented writer and director, Klimov’s career was marked with controversy from the very beginning. His 1964 feature debut, Welcome, or No Trespassing, was a thinly veiled comic attack on the system set at a “Youth Pioneer” summer camp. Held back by the studio, it was only released on the orders of Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who was completely charmed by Welcome’s mix of fantasy and reality. Klimov’s 1965 follow-up, Adventures of a Dentist, satirized the Soviet practice of punishing talented individuals for the sake of preserving collective mediocrity, an unofficial policy evidenced by the fact that the studio only gave Dentist a limited release. Welcome, or No Trespassing and Adventures of a Dentist will screen in a double feature on June 5.
It was almost ten years before Klimov would complete his next film, Rasputin, a hypnotic, one-of-a-kind portrait of the legendarily depraved “mad monk” that alternates between pre-revolution documentary footage and newly filmed material. Unfortunately, it was another six years before anyone saw the film, and usually in heavily edited versions. The full-length, 152-minute cut of Rasputin will screen on June 12.
Klimov was married to his film-school sweetheart, the equally talented writer-director Larisa Shepitko, but Shepitko died tragically in a car accident on the first day of shooting her film Farewell to Matyora. Klimov took over production of Farewell (screening June 26), and the resulting film is an elegiac tribute to his beloved wife. After he completed his final and most celebrated movie, the 1986 World War II odyssey Come and See (June 22), Klimov was appointed head of the Soviet Union of Cinematographers. He then secured the release of a number of banned films and he also helped to promote new controversial efforts, becoming, like Mikhail Gorbachev, a progressive symbol of “Perestroika.” Due to bureaucratic infighting, Klimov resigned his position after only two years in 1988, and sadly never regained enough momentum to complete another feature.
From a quantitative viewpoint, Klimov left behind only a modest legacy on film when he died in October 2003, but they were films that mattered, and the same can be said for his career as an activist and leader.
