Eine Frau unter Einfluß (A Woman under the Influence)

In the organizer's words:

John Cassavetes' films are populated by gentle strays, over-excited husbands or desperate middle-class people, "always on the edge, between tragedy and the grotesque, between cruelty and compassion, between violence and tenderness" (Georg Seeßlen). In his personal favorite film, A WIFE UNDER THE INFLUENCE, Mabel, wife, housewife and mother of three, succeeds only with extreme difficulty and rapidly diminishing success in meeting the expectations of those around her and being "normal". Despite all the efforts of her ultimately similarly complicated husband, Mabel becomes dramatically unstable, unpredictable - in other words, "crazy". Gena Rowlands (1930 - 2024) plays this desperate woman in Cassavetes' relentless attempt to look behind the façade of an average family with terrific, justifiably Oscar-nominated intensity - always volatile, highly sensitive and increasingly personality-disturbed. Cassavetes' staging, built entirely on the faces and bodies of the actors, skillfully mixes theatrical and cinematic devices, making this psychological study a unique actors' film.

Part of the FilmGalerie's fall series "IN MEMORIAM. Cinematic flashbacks" from 29.10.-3.12.2025.