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Opening Night
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Cassavetes
Written by	John Cassavetes
Produced by	Al Ruban
Starring	Gena Rowlands Ben Gazzara Joan Blondell Paul Stewart Zohra Lampert John Cassavetes
Cinematography	Alan Ruban
Edited by	Tom Cornwell
Music by	Bo Harwood
Production company	Faces Distribution
Distributed by	Faces Distribution
Release date	December 25, 1977 (1977-12-25)
Running time	144 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Opening Night is a 1977 American psychological drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes, and starring Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, Joan Blondell, Paul Stewart, Zohra Lampert, and Cassavetes. Its plot follows a stage actress who, after witnessing the accidental death of one of her fans, is haunted by a recurring apparition of the deceased woman, spurring a nervous breakdown while she prepares for the premiere of a Broadway play.

Though set in Connecticut and New York City, Opening Night was shot on location in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California, with the theatrical performance sequences taking place at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

Plot

Myrtle Gordon is a famous but troubled middle-aged actress performing out-of-town previews in New Haven, Connecticut of a new play called The Second Woman before its Broadway run. While leaving the theatre after a performance, Myrtle signs autographs and encounters an obsessive teenaged fan, Nancy, who runs after Myrtle into the street and is struck by a car. Myrtle is unsettled by the incident, and even goes to the girl's shiva, though her family greets her coolly.

Myrtle struggles to connect with the character she is playing in The Second Woman, finding her to have no motivation beyond her age. Over the course of numerous performances, Myrtle departs from the play's script in myriad ways, including changing her lines, throwing props around the set, breaking the fourth wall, and collapsing on stage. This frustrates others involved in the play. The writer, Sarah Goode, attempts to force Myrtle into facing her age. Myrtle admits to her that she has been seeing the apparition of Nancy—the teenager killed in the car accident—which Myrtle believes is a projection of her youth.

Myrtle's state of mind continues to deteriorate, and she begins to drink heavily. She imagines Nancy attacking her, and later she throws herself against the walls of Sarah's hotel room, breaking her sunglasses and slashing her face. The incident disturbs Sarah, who expresses her wish to have Myrtle replaced in the play, feeling she is psychologically unable to perform. After storming out of a rehearsal, Myrtle visits Sarah's spiritual medium for help and has another violent encounter with her vision of Nancy, this time fighting back and “killing” Nancy's ghost. Myrtle attempts to seduce Maurice Aarons—her leading man and a former lover—but he refuses.

Myrtle fails to show up on time for her call on opening night. When she finally arrives, Myrtle is so drunk that she can barely stand. With the audience growing restless, director Manny Victor demands the show go on. Myrtle struggles through the show's opening scenes, collapsing before her entrance and again on stage. As the show continues, Myrtle finds something of a rhythm. By the end, she and Maurice go off script and improvise the play's final act, to the producers’ chagrin and the audience's rapturous applause.

Cast

• Gena Rowlands as Myrtle Gordon
• Ben Gazzara as Manny Victor
• Joan Blondell as Sarah Goode
• Paul Stewart as David Samuels
• Zohra Lampert as Dorothy Victor
• John Cassavetes as Maurice Aarons
• John Tuell as Gus Simmons
• Laura Johnson as Nancy Stein
• Lady Rowlands as Melva Drake
• John Finnegan as Bobby
• Fred Draper as Leo
• Katherine Cassavetes as Vivian
• Louise Lewis (credited as Louise Fitch) as Kelly
• Carol Warren as Carla
• Ray Powers as Jimmy

Analysis

Writing in a 2018 retrospective for Esquire, critic Dom Nero describes Opening Night as a horror film or art horror film, writing: "In the way that its title sequence magnifies the mundane cheers of an audience into a violently furious sound, it takes our reality and presents the concurrent darkness within like the truth-driven horror films such as Get Out. In the way that it drapes Gena Rowlands in long, black, specter-like capes and collars—and the primal world around her colored in bright, bloody reds—it turns a funhouse mirror onto the crushing, almost satanic rituals of film acting and movie star culture like in Mulholland Drive. In the way that its haunting and minimalistic score is reminiscent of a John Carpenter theme, it makes a psychological break as foreboding as a masked bogeyman haunting suburban teenagers."

The concept of aging is constantly addressed at a narrative level in the film, both in the dialogue and the image of the film itself. The "evil" of old age practically overwhelms the characters from the first seconds of the movie. It is represented by the enormous pictures of an older woman that cover the play's stage. The figures of Myrtle and Maurice, who appear in a long shot, are made to appear little and unimportant beneath the unquestionable fact of aging and its figural embodiment in the picture. In a subsequent scene, Marty, Maurice's stage persona, addresses the issue directly, declaring, "I'm getting older. What do we do about that?" This theme of aging, which is hinted at in other works of Cassavetes, is merely the most overt (and possibly even superficial) expression of a deeper and more fundamental interest in time: a continuous investigation of time and its effects on the body and mind. For what seems like the entire film, Myrtle battles this fear of getting older. This battle, horrifically portrayed by Gena Rowlands, results in a final climactic drunken struggle of existential resolve in the last scene. She stumbles her way through the play, determined to keep the show going.

As Myrtle collapses, the remainder of the movie dismantles these boundaries. Some in Myrtle's immediate vicinity even wonder if the girl who is killed at the start ever even existed. But this too becomes unclear if they say that to "knock some sense" into Myrtle or to try anything else they can think of to bring her back to the play. Although it doesn't drive the plot, this mystery influences performance and appearance. Rowlands alternates between a sultry, exhausted woman whose age she attempts to hide and a sophisticated, gorgeous star. Cassavetes and Rowlands blend these two faces together in the first of many sequences that break down the movie's numerous dichotomies by making Myrtle appear gorgeous rather than just on stage and in front of an audience. Even though Myrtle's eventual triumphant dips into making up her lines and simply riffing against the plot show her exploring new areas, it is the camera that revitalizes the theater through cinema. The film's blurred lines feed Myrtle's desire to shake up the stage, which has become boring for her.

Myrtle is, right from the outset, undergoing this long spiral into mental agony, slowly locking herself with a self-emblazoned cage that has manifested itself within her head, hiding behind her eyes and clouding every judgment that she makes. Everything she does seems outlandish and comes across in a brash and unstable way, but this is just how she is slowly crumbling to the ground. Rowlands acts this out in such a beautifully evocative way that the audience can only begin to realize in very split moments what is truly happening. Yet they are completely aware that a large psychological experience is unfolding before us. Through how she performs this role, the audience can tell that Myrtle is indeed going through the acceptance phase of what she had discovered, her aging self parallels those younger than her - among many other things - she is attempting to come to terms with this. But much of the film is instead spent with her trying to avoid this as she already knows the truth, but wishes to avoid the consequences of it. Throughout the film, she is subtly coming to terms with who she really is.

Opening Night raises many questions. What happens when the pursuit of something has gone so far for so long that you're no longer sure what it is you're looking for? What is it that keeps you here, doing the same thing over and over again? Why is it so hard to feel that same sense of elation you once experienced when you were first starting out, when you were young and inexperienced but had a gleam in your eyes and a zeal for life? And now that you're here, was it everything you wanted? Is this the dream you imagined it to be?

Production

Filming took place primarily at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium

Though set in New Haven, Connecticut and New York City, Opening Night was shot on location in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California. The film's theater sequences were shot at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

Cassavetes sponsored the entire shoot of Opening Night, which took place between November 1976 and March 1977, a five-month period. To raise the funds needed to finish the movie, he had to take time off in February to appear in a TV pilot. Along with the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, the Lindy Opera House and the Green Hotel were his primary venues for filming. For creative reasons, he thought it was best to shoot on location, but he also couldn't afford to construct studio sets for the movies he self-financed. When compared to the settings of his previous self-financed movies, the three primary locales for Opening Night were incredibly lavish. Perhaps reflecting the budget, it features higher production qualities than his previous films as well as more sophisticated camera work in many scenes. Cassavetes did, however, use the hand-held camera in several sequences, including one between Myrtle and Melva Drake, the psychic, in which Myrtle kills her vision of the young girl.

Release

In common with earlier films, Cassavetes struggled to get Opening Night distributed in the United States. After a number of preview screenings, it opened on December 25, 1977, at the Fox Wilshire Theater, Los Angeles where it played to almost empty houses, and closed in February having never been commercially shown elsewhere. Screenings in New York City that March were similarly ignored. The film was only picked up by an American distributor in 1991, two years after Cassavetes' death.

In 1978, it was entered into the 28th Berlin International Film Festival, where Gena Rowlands won the Silver Bear for Best Actress.

The film was screened out of competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival.

In the 35th Golden Globes Awards in 1978, Gena Rowlands was nominated for Best Leading Actress in a Drama, and Joan Blondell was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.

Reception

Opening Night was critically panned in the US on its release. The review in Variety that appeared after a press screening concluded, "One must question whether more than a handful of moviegoers are interested in the effort, whether audiences have not already seen enough of Cassavetes' characters ... He's made these films before and not many seemed interested in them." When it opened in New York, the film was not reviewed at all in most newspapers and magazines.

The film was better received in Europe, with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominating Rowlands and Blondell for the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, at the 35th Golden Globe Awards.

Its reputation has improved since its initial release. It currently holds a 96% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 27 reviews; the consensus states: "Opening Night is as dense and difficult as one would expect from John Cassavetes, but even the director's detractors will be unable to deny the power of Gena Rowlands' performance."

In popular culture

The film has been referenced by several musicians. Back to the Beat, an EP from the band, Motion City Soundtrack, features a song titled "Opening Night", in reference to the film. The Hold Steady's 2008 album Stay Positive makes various allusions to the film; the closing song "Slapped Actress" is the most explicit. "Shut Up"—the first track on Savages' 2013 album Silence Yourself—opens with dialogue between Rowlands and Blondell sampled from the film. Róisín Murphy's music video for "Exploitation", from the album Hairless Toys, serves as an homage to the movie.

Jessica Pratt cited the film as an influence on her album Quiet Signs and titled the instrumental first track "Opening Night." Describing her reaction to the film after viewing it at a screening, she said, "Sometimes when you see a film, especially an emotional, anguishing film like that, it can just simmer in your subconscious for a while. It definitely did that for me."

Pedro Almodóvar repeats the film's accident scene in his film All About My Mother as the center of the dramatic conflict.

Rufus Wainwright and Ivo van Hove have adapted the film into a musical set to premier at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End in March 2024.

Arnaud Desplechin, whose Esther Kahn (2000), though based on a late-nineteenth-century novel, presents an almost identical hypothesis on stage acting and self-actualization.

References

My References:

Clayfield, M. (2007, May). All the World’s a Stage: John Cassavetes’ Opening Night. Senses of Cinema. Retrieved July 23, 2024.

Lim, Dennis. (2013, October 25). Opening night: The play’s the thing. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved July 24, 2024.

Cassavetes’ Works: Opening Night. (n.d.). People.bu.edu. Retrieved July 23, 2024

FilmAffinity. (n.d.). FilmAffinity. Retrieved July 24, 2024.