Word: film
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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Husbands is primarily a film about pain and loss, but it is also boisterously funny. Cassavetes finds some of his most shattering moments of revelation inside comedy, and he is expert at portraying the anguish close beneath each laugh. Harry, Archie and Gus are growing old without ever having grown up. There is a long sequence in a bar, for example, with the three men and a crew of drinking buddies sitting around singing their favorite songs, that abounds with invention and unforced humor sufficient for at least a dozen other movies...
...convenient to speak of Husbands as Cassavetes' film, since he is its author as well as director and costar. The contributions made by Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara, though, must have been enormous. Cassavetes works in a very personal, freewheeling style that draws heavily on the inspiration of his actors. The performers are so supremely good in their roles that they wipe out any distinction between the actor and the character. The virtuoso feat may be unnoticed by audiences who prefer to assume that the three are merely playing themselves...
Husbands can be at times an ugly film (witness a scene in the men's room of a bar with Gus and Archie heaving up two days' worth of booze) and even a cruel one. But it is impossible to keep from smiling at Archie's dealing with a London cabbie ("He wants some bobs. Give him some bobs"). It is equally impossible to withhold sympathy over Harry's half-drunken confession: "Aside from sex-and my wife's very good at it, goddamn her-I like you guys better. I love you." Cassavetes...
...artist and the disposition of a Greek gunrunner, he has spent much of his professional life fighting for it. So, by all rights, this should be his era-the era of the "new Hollywood," born out of the success of Easy Rider, and a time in which film makers can enjoy unrestricted personal expression. Cassavetes has heard a good deal about the "new Hollywood." He just cannot find...
...search, he has had a few bad scrapes. His first film, Shadows, was begun independently and as an act of love. It was finished on contributions from a radio audience who heard Cassavetes plead for funds on the Jean Shepherd show late one night. His next film, Too Late Blues, was financed-and controlled-by Paramount. Stanley Kramer, executive producer of A Child Is Waiting and a director himself (On the Beach, Judgment at Nuremberg), fired Cassavetes before he could even complete editing Child...