The entertainment industry lost a legendary Hollywood titan with the passing of Gena Rowlands on August 14, 2024. The 2-time Oscar nominee and 2016 Academy Award honoree was a pioneering actress in independent cinema who, along with her husband John Cassavetes, turned in some of the rawest and most realistic indie films of the ’60s and ’70s. While younger generations may recognize her performance in her son Nick Cassavetes’ The Notebook, cinephiles will never forget Rowland’s breathtaking performance in A Woman Under the Influence.
Despite the iconic movie performances throughout the 1970s, including Gene Hackman in The French Connection, Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, and Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, none outrank the convincing candor of Rowlands’ work in A Woman Under the Influence. In addition to celebrating the towering screen performance in honor of Rowlands’ passing, the sobering depiction of mental illness is more timely and topical than ever in 2024.
Gena Rowlands’ Powerhouse Career
Gena Rowlands is an all-time great American actor with four Emmy Awards and two Golden Globes. Born Virginia Cathryn Rowlands in 1930 in Madison, Wisconsin, Rowlands began her acting career on television in 1954. That same year, Rowlands married John Cassavetes, an actor turned director who blazed the trail for American independent cinema in the 1960s. After making episodic appearances in various TV shows, Rowlands made her big-screen debut in 1958’s The High Cost of Living. The same year, she played a nightclub audience member in Shadows, Cassavetes’ feature film debut.
Rowlands’s appearance in Shadows launched a fecund creative rapport with her husband that would continue throughout their careers. The frequent actor-director duo collaborated next on A Child is Waiting in 1963, 1968’s landmark indie film Faces, the beautiful romance Minnie and Moskowitz in 1971, 1977’s operatic drama Opening Night, the powerful star vehicle Gloria in 1980, and Love Streams in 1984. Rowlands earned a Golden Globe nod for her work in Gloria, and won a Golden Globe for her unforgettable performance in A Woman Under the Influence.
Before extolling the virtues of Rowlands’ heartbreaking performance in A Woman Under the Influence, it’s worth noting that she continued to work well after John Cassavetes’ passing in 1989. Rowlands won her first Primetime Emmy Award and second Golden Globe for her work in 1987’s The Betty Ford Story. Rowlands added a second Emmy for her leading turn in the 1991 TV movie Face of a Stranger. Other notable credits for Rowland include Hope Floats, The Notebook, The Skeleton Key, Persepolis, Monk, Paris, I Love You, and more. Yet, despite her impressive resume and handful of awards and accolades, Rowlands’ deeply unsettling performance as Mabel Longhetti in A Woman Under the Influence is arguably the best of the 1970s.
Rowlands’ Mabel Goes From Bad to Worse
Written and directed by John Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence refers to Mabel Longhetti, a deeply depressed, mentally ill homemaker with a severe drinking problem. Mabel lives with her oppressive construction worker husband, Nick (Peter Falk), and their three children. When Mabel reluctantly sends her children to her mother’s for the night so she can go on a date with Nick, her erratic behavior establishes something fundamentally wrong within Mabel’s constitution. Nick calls and cancels the date due to a work emergency, leaving Mabel to get drunk in a bar with a man named Garson (George Dunn).
Despite declining his advances, Mabel becomes nearly black-out drunk and is taken to Garson’s home. Mabel hits Garson with her purse as she struggles to ward off a sexual assault attempt. The next morning, Mabel wakes up with Garson beside her in bed, wondering what happened as she continues to call Garson by Nick’s name. Later, when Nick brings over 10 co-workers home for dinner, Mabel is forced to cook for them in a state of hung-over grogginess. Yet, Mabel quickly turns playful and begins interacting with Nick’s colleagues with a pleasant attitude and quirky sense of humor, making viewers even more concerned about her unstable well-being.
Time and again, Mabel goes from cranky and mean to pleasant and engaging in moments, with Rowlands slowly building one of the most troubled, flawed, unpredictable, and misunderstood characters in cinematic history. Just as Mabel feels welcome, comfortable, and willing to interact with Nick’s colleagues, Nick snaps at her for being too friendly with one of them, hinting at his oppressive nature. Hungover in a state of nervous anxiety the following morning, Mabel cannot deal with Nick’s mother and her three children storming into the house.
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A Concerning Climax
With Nick considering medical attention, Mabel’s moods and mannerisms become more worrisome. She gets drunk and hosts a birthday party, forcing a parent to take their child away from her in the belief she is unsafe. Nick arrives and finds the situation out of hand with the children neglected. He slaps Mabel in the face and orders her to see a doctor for her declining mental health. Nick’s mother accuses Mabel of being a bad mother who drinks too much and has been unfaithful, forcing Nick to institutionalize his wife in a psychiatric hospital.
Six months later, Mabel returns home completely unrecognizable. All the quirky affections and whimsical peccadilloes are gone. She’s been reduced to a sad, silent observer resulting from electroshock therapy. The movie ends with Mabel breaking down in front of her terrified children, cutting herself and bleeding out before Nick hits her again. When the credits roll, viewers feel just as bruised and battered as Mabel and hearts go out to her more than any movie character in the 1970s.
Why Rowlands’ Performance Is the Best of the 1970s
Words cannot do justice to Gena Rowlands’ unshakable performance in A Woman Under the Influence. In what needs to be seen to believe, Rowlands is never interested in big, showy moments. Instead, she carefully crafts a sinking portrait of a person gradually declining spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically. The trailblazing ’70s indie film’s title doesn’t only refer to Mabel’s alcoholism, it connotes the influence of her husband Nick, whom Mabel lives under; a stiflingly outdated view of masculinity and patriarchy born in the 1950s that was still in vogue in the ’70s. Nick is just as toxic as the booze she ingests, and somehow, Rowlands manages to inextricably link Mabel’s alcoholism and mental illness with Nick’s negative influence.
The small characterizations that Rowlands steadily builds over the punishing 155-minute runtime are second to none. She laughs, cries, grins, smiles, sinks low, perks up, mumbles to herself, makes endearing quacking sounds like a child, lashes out with violent anger, stares blankly at walls, and moves from calm and sedate to upbeat and high-energy. All of this is conveyed with expert body language, expressive eyes, and little intelligible dialogue. It’s a tour de force turn that brilliantly mirrors Mabel’s volatile physicality with erratic mental fitness. The moments between the dialogue show Rowlands in full command of the character; a tired look here, a fleeting expression of joy there, that adds up to a powerful sum greater than its parts.
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At no point does it feel like an actor is performing while watching Rowlands. Mable genuinely exists, with Rowlands delivering one of the rawest and most devastatingly unglamorous depictions of mental illness on record. The most haunting part is that viewers can’t quite tell what ails Mabel until the end when it’s clear her manic psychosis is a byproduct of her environment and the societal demands of womanhood. Mabel’s alcoholism is a symptom of a much deeper fundamental problem, with Rowlands brilliantly blurring the torment every step of the way.
As such, Rowlands won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination for her work in A Woman Under the Influence. Fifty years since its release, the performance remains the best of the 1970s and one of the greatest ever committed to celluloid.
A Woman Under the Influence is available to stream on Max & The Criterion Channel.
