Thoughts on Opening Night

 On Criterion in April 2021, I watched the 1977 film Opening Night, starring Gena Rowlands as a stage actress in previews for her new show, and struggling with anxiety over her age and getting older, as well as being deeply affected by the accidental death of a young teenage fan she briefly met, choosing to create a new internal character based on her when performing in order to not feel empty anymore. I thought it was a little long at two and a half hours, and some scenes that dragged could have been cut, but overall, it was pretty good.

Rowlands is one of my favorite actresses, because I love her throaty voice (I thought she was from the Bronx, but she’s from Wisconsin and moved to NYC when she was young), her glamour, and how my grandma resembled her a little, so it feels a little familiar to me. Her character Evelyn doesn’t want to play middle-aged women because she’s worried that’s all she will be cast as, and doesn’t want to accept that she is nearly fifty, still wanting to feel youthful and vibrant. So in defiance, she plays her stage character in a marital drama like a much younger woman, ad-libbing onstage and having free-spirited monologues, which entertains the audience but frustrates her director (Ben Gazarra). She goes on more of a journey of self-discovery, dealing with her career and age and status as a woman, and ends up having a lost time on opening night, where she is missing from the theater, shows up heavily late and completely bombed, and the crew have to stall the impatient audience and get her stage-ready through makeup and black coffee, and pray she won’t bomb onstage.

I haven’t seen much of John Cassavetes’ movies. Besides this, I’ve seen Gloria, Minnie and Moskowitz, Shadows, and his acting in Edge of the City. He acts in this as well, as Rowlands’ costar in the play, and was decent, having a greyed and lean handsomeness to him, he was about fifty at the time.

I was happy to see Joan Blondell in one of her last roles (she was also in Grease), I forgot how much I had liked her in her 1930s movies as a funny best friend or screwball heroine. She was more elderly here and slowed down, but still had that wit about her, playing someone who cared about Rowlands but was skeptical about her mental state at the same time.

Rowlands is nearly 91 now, and basically retired now, her last credits were a feature in 2014 and a short in 2017. I love her warm and tough presence onscreen. My favorite films of her have been Gloria, Unhook the Stars, Night on Earth, Paris Je’Taime, and Hysterical Blindness.