''Opening Night'' is a 1977 American
psychological drama film written and directed by
John Cassavetes, and starring
Gena Rowlands
Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlands (born June 19, 1930) is an American retired actress, whose career in film, stage, and television has spanned seven decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she is known for her collaborations ...
,
Ben Gazzara,
Joan Blondell,
Paul Stewart,
Zohra Lampert
Zohra Lampert is an American actress, who has had roles on stage, film and television. She performed under her then-married name of Zohra Alton early in her career.
Among her performances were as the title character in the 1971 cult horror film ...
, 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
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
I ...
, with the theatrical performance sequences taking place at the
Pasadena Civic Auditorium
The Pasadena Convention Center is a convention center in Pasadena, California. It consists of three buildings.
Pasadena Civic Auditorium
The Civic Auditorium, one of the major structures in the Pasadena Civic Center District, was built in 1931 an ...
.
Plot
Myrtle Gordon is a famous but troubled middle-aged actress performing out-of-town previews in
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...
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
Shiva (; sa, शिव, lit=The Auspicious One, Śiva ), also known as Mahadeva (; ɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐ, or Hara, is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the Supreme Being in Shaivism, one of the major traditions within Hindu ...
, 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 with 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
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spir ...
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
Analysis
Writing in a 2018 retrospective for ''
Esquire
Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title.
In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentlema ...
'', critic Dom Nero describes ''Opening Night'' as a
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
or
art horror film
Art horror or arthouse horror (sometimes called elevated horror) is a sub-genre of both horror films and art-films. It explores and experiments with the artistic uses of horror.
Characteristics
Art-horror films tend to rely on atmosphere build ...
, 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
''Get Out'' is a 2017 American psychological horror film written, co-produced, and directed by Jordan Peele in his directorial debut. It stars Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Lil Rel Howery, LaKeith Stanfield, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landr ...
''. 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."
Production
![Pasadena Civic Auditorium Oct 2016](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Pasadena_Civic_Auditorium_Oct_2016.jpg)
Though set in
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...
and New York City, ''Opening Night'' was shot on location in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
and
Pasadena
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
Its ...
, California.
The film's theater sequences were shot at the
Pasadena Civic Auditorium
The Pasadena Convention Center is a convention center in Pasadena, California. It consists of three buildings.
Pasadena Civic Auditorium
The Civic Auditorium, one of the major structures in the Pasadena Civic Center District, was built in 1931 an ...
.
[
]
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
The 28th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 22 February to 5 March 1978. Director Wolf Donner successfully managed to shift the festival's date from June to February, a change which has remained ever since. This was the firs ...
, where Gena Rowlands
Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlands (born June 19, 1930) is an American retired actress, whose career in film, stage, and television has spanned seven decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she is known for her collaborations ...
won the Silver Bear for Best Actress.
The film was screened out of competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival
The 45th Cannes Film Festival was held from 7 to 18 May 1992. The Palme d'Or went to the ''Den goda viljan'' by Bille August.
The festival opened with ''Basic Instinct'', directed by Paul Verhoeven and closed with ''Far and Away'', directed by Ro ...
.
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
The 35th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television for 1977, were held on January 28, 1978.
Winners and nominees Film
Television
Best Series - Drama
''Roots''
*''Charlie's Angels''
*''Columbo''
*''Family''
*''Starsky a ...
.
Its reputation has improved since its initial release. It currently holds a 96% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
from 26 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."
Film critic Dan Schneider
Daniel James Schneider (born January 14, 1966) is an American television producer, screenwriter, and actor. After appearing in mostly supporting roles in a number of 1980s and 1990s films and TV shows, Schneider devoted himself to behind-the-s ...
wrote, of the film's narrative structure:
Many critics have taken this film to be a portrait of an alcoholic ... But this is wrong, for alcohol isn't her problem – nor is her chain smoking. They are merely diversions from whatever thing is really compelling her to her own destruction, and much to Cassavetes' credit, as a storyteller, he never lets us find out exactly what's wrong with Myrtle, and despite her coming through in the end, there's no reason to expect that she has really resolved anything of consequence. This sort of end without resolution links Cassavetes directly with the more daring European directors of the recent past, who were comfortable in not revealing everything to an audience, and forcing their viewers to cogitate, even if it hurts.
In pop 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
The Hold Steady is an American rock band originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, now based in Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2003. The band consists of Craig Finn (vocals, guitar), Tad Kubler (guitar), Galen Polivka (bass), Bobby Drake (drums), ...
'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
''Silence Yourself'' is the debut studio album by the English post-punk band Savages, released on 6 May 2013 on Matador Records and Pop Noire, a label owned by vocalist Jehnny Beth. It was nominated for the 2013 Mercury Prize.
Music and s ...
''—opens with dialogue between Rowlands and Blondell sampled from the film. Róisín Murphy
Róisín Marie Murphy ( , ; born 5 July 1973) is an Irish singer, songwriter, and record producer. She first became known in the 1990s as one half of the pop duo Moloko alongside English musician Mark Brydon. After the breakup of Moloko, she em ...
's music video for "Exploitation", from the album ''Hairless Toys
''Hairless Toys'' is the third solo studio album by Irish singer Róisín Murphy. It was released on 8 May 2015 by Play It Again Sam. It is Murphy's first full-length release since 2007's ''Overpowered''. The album was nominated for Best Irish ...
'', serves as an homage to the movie.
Jessica Pratt cited the film as an influence on her album ''Quiet Signs
''Quiet Signs'' is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt. It was released on February 8, 2019, through Mexican Summer
Mexican Summer is an independent record label founded in 2009 by Keith Abrahamsson and Andres Sa ...
'' 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
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (; (often known simply as Almodóvar) born 25 September 1949) is a Spanish filmmaker. His films are marked by melodrama, irreverent humour, bold colour, glossy décor, quotations from popular culture, and complex narr ...
repeats the film's accident scene in his film '' All About My Mother'' as the center of the dramatic conflict.
References
External links
*
*
*
''Opening Night: The Play’s the Thing''
an essay by Dennis Lim
Dennis Lim (born in Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern t ...
at the Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Opening Night
1977 films
1977 drama films
1970s ghost films
1970s psychological drama films
American independent films
American psychological drama films
American psychological thriller films
1970s English-language films
Films directed by John Cassavetes
Films about actors
Films about alcoholism
Films set in Connecticut
Films set in Manhattan
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films about mental health
1970s American films