U.N. Owen Of my all-time favourite films.I just read a splendid review,her, by 'noreaster13,' and I highly recommend it, as what they say, is exactly what I would.Hollywood (as an unspoken rule), rarely puts mature women (over 40) into lead roles, and thank goodness for Ms. Rowlands and her husband, the late director, John Cassavetes, for creating this tribute to Ms. Rowlands talent, and to and for those mature women, who are silenced in a culture that has, and still does - favour youth.Shameful to do do, because, I always felt, as the saying goes, 'youth is wasted on the young.'Ms. Rowland's Gloria Swenson - 'a nod to Gloria Swanson,' as a reporter says of Gloria, is a woman who lived her earlier days as arm-candy, to the men of the underworld, and, smartly realised that, as she 'd get older, she'd have no one, but, herself, to be there for her.She's over the 40-year mark, and has undoubtedly been replaced, but, still maintains a cordial relationship with those men, and their associates.Doing so, means fading - into the background, and - if lucky, they might, perhaps, throw her a bone, as it were, on the rare-occasion she needs a little help getting by, but, Gloria is, above all, a self-reliant woman, not school-smart, but very street-smart, and that and her wits has gotten he by.Thrown into this solitary existence - one she describes as 'having my friends, my apartment, and my cat,' is the 6-year old neighbour's boy, Phil Dawn, the son of a mob accountant, who, has crossed the code of silence, and is now a dead man - literally.In an early scene, after Gloria and Phil (the 'kid') escape down a staircase, Gloria - alone on a street corner, with Phil, realises the predicament she's now in, and says, 'the guys who killed your family, are friends of mine.''My feet are falling off, I can't run anymore, what am I doing here?'And, with these words, she realises her isolation, and as a car full of those men, who they just escaped from come careening to a halt, aside Gloria and Phil, who say, they; 'got no issue with you, we just want the book, and the boy,' to which Gloria realises the truth; if she turns him over, he's dead.For what? Just being the son of the mob accountant? A 6-year old, who 'can't even speak English (of course, he can), and doesn't know anything?'Yes - just, because.With this exchange, she realises she's to make a choice, which will alter her future - if she's going to survive.She didn't look for being Phil's saviour, and Phil didn't ask, either, but, through circumstance, and fate, it is meant to be, and in order for them both to live, they must stay together.I've never seen the remake, and I know no one could step into the (high heeled) shoes of Gloria, which Ms. Rowlands embodies so beautifully.As the 2 become enmeshed in saving each others lives, one of my favourite lines is spoken by Phil, as a snooty hotel clerk refuses them a room; ''He don't know the score, he sees a dame like you, and a guy like me, he don't know.'This film - to paraphrase 'noreaster13,' is the result of 'adult filmmakers making a film for adults,' a rarity, today. It's gritty, it's not a connect-the dots' story, which is easily predictable.I highly recommend this film for those who haven't yet seen it, and even for those who have, such as myself..

chaos-rampant This is the film Cassavetes did for Hollywood bossmen after the debacle of Opening Night. While it is far from his norm - it has music cues and a score, a gangster plot with a few shootouts - aren't we better off that he had the opportunity to go out with a camera that year and not sit around in dismay? Cherish it, he had only one more left.It is his most straightforward and probably written in a haste, crude in spots, about an ex-mafia moll and a little kid running from gangsters around New York. It wouldn't be out of place in a double bill with Don Siegel really, or not that much.It actually casts light on another side of Cassavetes, less talked about. One was of course the visionary swimmer into streams of soul, tossing and turning in search of a true face.. Another was the actor who took odd paying jobs, wearing a variety of faces to finance that vision when he got back, very much like Welles whom he admired. He had done all sorts, many that were crime stuff on and off TV. Adored Cagney.We have deliberate reference of all those gangster films of old here, gumshoes and broads stuff, Rowlands as female Bogart (she calls other women dames), in turns snarling at bad guys and coolly walking away, waving it all off as dream. But this isn't that cocksure type film; this is about dreams, hopes, frayed nerves.The little boy salvaged from a gangster plot is the center that keeps pulling her back, summoning more of her gangster past around her, including finally the lover she never made it with. You can see how in longer Cassavetes form we would have uncertain life as this woman floats around bars and odd rooms and contrasts with being pulled back to a role she left behind, pulled to get out of it. Chinese Bookie comes to mind. That would have been tremendous to see but we have something else. All of the cool stuff are anachronistic at this point, not really draped with a sense of cool, which is a fashion sense. Cassavetes wouldn't know cool from a bar of soap really, lovable dunce that he was, so it comes out on the other side of the familiar posturing in an unselfconscious way.It's all abit like Rowlands' clothing (foisted on her by Cassavetes). That red kimono would have been fabulous in Rita Hayworth times but looks a bit out of place now, odd. Ditto Rowlands' tough expressions, as if propped up with some effort. This is all far from where the likes of Tarantino and Besson, who grew up in movies, would take these things to iron them out. You can watch this and see how that would play out.There's a weariness without sentimentality here that seeps in through an open window somewhere in this room that you've found yourself in for the night. A sense of not having much more time for masks and that whole posturing where you have to be someone. This is tied in that sweet exchange about "beating the system" between her and boy. People usually don't, but maybe some do, who knows? Who really cares about a system?Underneath it all there's a marvelous sense of wandering that I find myself giving into always in movies; it seems we go everywhere in New York. Underneath the worn fabrics, this is one about the (existential) body that must wear them, about weight that doesn't manage to hold you down. The sublime point as ever with Cassavetes is not giving up.

ElMaruecan82 "Gloria" is probably the only Cassavetes' film that relies on a formulaic plot: the improbable pairing that turns into a friendship and I suspect it's the most likely to disorient the hardcore fans of Cassavetes' unique directorial style, in other words, to be the least appreciated of his films. Still, it's the one that earned Gena Rowlands, the most defining face of the director's filmography, her second nomination for an Oscar.It's hard to believe that Gena Rowlands only had two nominations in her career, and that she didn't even win for "A Woman Under the Influence" which belongs to the list of the greatest female performances ever. Never mind. Here, Gena portrays Gloria, the neighbor of a doomed Puerto-Rican family. She enters as casually as ever to ask for some coffee and finds herself in the middle of a panic-stricken family scene. And what seems to be more inexplicable that the casting of Buck Henry as the geeky waspish connected-to-the-mob father (I loved Roger Ebert's comment on that one) is the way he jeopardized his family's life by threatening to give some names to the FBI, names that were all conveniently collected in a little book. After a quick second thought, the casting of Buck Henry is top notch, he looks like the kind of men to commit such incredible mistakes, and as we see him argue with his wife, remarkably played by the beautiful Julie Carmen, the feeling of urgency is efficiently conveyed. Indeed, we know it's only a matter of minutes before the gangsters start shooting and Gloria's entrance is like providence knocking on the door.Gloria is a blonde woman in her late forties or early fifties (Gena Rowlands was 50), she's single but she probably seen a lot in her bed, she doesn't like kids and especially Carmen's kids, a touch of irony that makes her the perfect candidate to take care of little Phil, the eight-year old son who'd keep his father's book. Gloria has the perfect mix of sophistication and street-wise attitude, and I guess one of the reasons that earned her an Oscar nomination is that she literally created something new on screen. Gloria has some mimics that remind of Gena's earliest roles, and her accent is just a delight for ears, but then when she suddenly pulled a gun off her purse, it's a total metamorphosis, and a landmark in Cassavetes's canon. For the first time, an actor transfigures a character to make the role appealing on a true cinematic level, regardless of any realistic approach. Gloria becomes a true heroine in all the meanings of the word without the sexiness of usual exploitations' female protagonists."You're so tough" will repeat little Phil, with eyes that are either impressed or full of love. Is it realistic that a child would fall in love with a woman like Gloria? I don't think any child would but then not any child would have been casted for that role. Here, Cassavetes did one incredible choice, because either John Adames' performance is one of the best or the worst when it comes to child acting. I still haven't made up my mind yet but I do believe it was absolutely distasteful for the Razzies to give the award of Worst Supporting Actor to a child. Now, was he good or bad? I felt the way he was dressed very weird, sometimes the way he delivered his lines was whiny and irritating, and when he was playing adult and tough, I was like "gee, what's wrong with this kid?" but then you understand that as much as the film would have been different without Gena Rowlands, it would have been maybe worse with a 'normal' kid. I mean 'normal' by cinematic standards. Could have you dealt with the same story told by Spielberg?Kids have a strange ability to outsmart adults in movies or to act in the most insolent, eccentric and annoying way as if they were comforted by the tacit rule that 'kids don't die in films'. Think of all the ones you saw in Disaster films, little boys who were braver than their whiny sisters (another stereotype), who displayed an insolent courage in front of the villains when any normal child would have wept or cried for his mommy. In the name of dramatization, the portrayal of little boys and little girls has suffered from a severe distance from reality. Cassavetes never cared for clichés and you could see in his earlier films how children kind of behaved naturally, where adults were the most childish persons actually. In "Gloria", he creates here a kid so cinematically abnormal that we can believe a boy would act that way, the way he delivers his lines, the content of these lines can be debated but I'd rather take his attitude than one that would obey to a standard. At the end, he fitted the role, didn't ruin the film and the best measure of that aspect is his chemistry with Gloria.While the friendship is the emotional core, the film strikes by its abundances of cat-and- mouse scenes, the gangster looking for Gloria, Gloria herself looking for Phil. Thanks to the directing and the score from Bill Conti, sometimes a bit overdone, the dosage between thrills and sentiments is perfectly handled and allow us to grow some feelings toward these two characters. In a way, the film carries so much comedy beyond the drama that we couldn't have dealt with a sad ending. And Cassavetes, aware that he's not probably making the highlight of his career, let the events flow naturally until a climactic confrontation and a finale that concludes the film in a very satisfying way. "Gloria" could have been better, but it also could have been worse. Just ask yourself what if another director made "Gloria"

bregund Follow the tough-as-nails Gloria as she hopscotches all over NYC with a kid in tow, from subway to train to taxi to bus. This is the most non-linear film I've ever seen, it plays out as more of an experimental film than a mainstream piece. That the character of Gloria is the focus of the camera in almost every single scene implies that this is more of a character study than a mob movie, an idea confirmed by its title. I was startled to realize how similar this film is to the Pope of Greenwich Village, with the same kind of rambling, non-linear storytelling style.The most fascinating thing about this film is that Gloria is so guarded that you can never read her motives...any moment something startling could happen. When a car full of mobsters pulls up and demands that she hand over Phil, the boy, Gloria hauls out a piece and blows them back to the stone age; it's a scene that is completely unexpected, and you find yourself admiring her. In another scene, they journey to a diner and sit down for a meal, then she gets up and begins talking to a group of men at a table in the background, and you suddenly realize that she didn't just randomly choose this restaurant, she came to make a deal with the mobsters; it's so unexpected, nothing in this film is what you expect it to be, there is a surprise around every corner. Cassavetes apparently wanted to keep you guessing, and one can imagine him dismissing cliché after cliché from the screenplay until it was completely original.Gena Rowlands is marvelous; with her poker face, she calmly deals with one crisis after another, casually solving her problems with her gun or her intellect, which she honed on the streets after years of being involved with the mob. As the film progresses, her weary cynicism gradually erodes to affection for the little boy she initially disliked. This film is refreshingly original.