Intriguing but enigmatic backstage theater melodrama with shades of All About Eve.
Comment
09/11/08
Opening Night (1977)
95
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:21
Fresh:20
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.8/10
Consensus: 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.
Synopsis: John Cassavetes, known for his in-depth explorations of individuals who appear to be on the brink of sanity, paints another powerful portrait with OPENING NIGHT. Gena Rowlands stars as Myrtle... [More]
Starring: Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara
Director: John Cassavetes
Reviews for Opening Night
The unpredictability of Rowlands' character brings one surprise after another to the narrative as the other characters scramble to accommodate or cajole her, and the surprises are often as funny as they are intensely dramatic.
08/11/08
Gena Rowlands turns in another virtuoso performance as the troubled actress. Cassavetes' highly personal work will please his coterie of enthusiasts, but for general audiences it will be viewed as shrill, puzzling, depressing and overlong.
07/28/08
Top CriticJohn Cassavetes was unique in his visions and his films.
07/28/08
As per usual it features a superb cast, including the ever-present Gena Rowlands, who successfully improvise their way the film.
07/28/08
Top CriticJuggling onstage and offstage action, Cassavetes makes this a fascinating look at some of the internal mechanisms and conflicts that create theatrical fiction.
07/28/08
As densely layered and difficult as anything else Cassavetes ever directed, as dense as any American film from the 1970s.
06/23/08
the film is almost suffocatingly long, even though its ideas about actors, acting and real life are among Cassavetes's most intriguing.
06/15/07
As you might expect, coming from indie godfather John Cassavetes, 1977’s Opening Night is something else, a weird, raw, ragged portrait of an actress on the verge of a
06/15/07
Top CriticThe film of the week is 30 years old and hasn't aged a day. It's John Cassavetes's Opening Night, a truly mesmerising study of anxiety and identity crisis in theatreland.
06/15/07
Woody Allen said that he could watch a Bergman movie and feel himself gripped as if by a thriller; that's how I felt watching this restored version of John Cassavetes's 1977 picture Opening Night
06/15/07
Top CriticThe camerawork is instinctively fluid, the performances savage – this is one of the best films about theatre ever made.
06/15/07
Top CriticOpening Night is a truly grand unveiling of our innermost fears.
06/15/07
Another of Cassavetes' puzzling, personal, neurotic, and often brilliant productions that would have benefited from editing with a scythe.
08/30/06
Top CriticAt once a lament to the ravages of age and an examination of those tiny foibles which separate reality from dramatic artifice, it’s a baffling and intricate film which, although light on conventional pleasures, still manages to provoke and beguile.
01/26/06
No review available.
10/09/05
No review available.
09/17/05
No review available.
07/22/05
Rowlands sings a different kind of mad song in Opening Night, playing a diva-like actress preparing a part about aging that haunts her, at times literally, with a vision of lost youth.
02/14/05
No review available.
01/17/05
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