Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Acting
JOHN CASSAVETES
b. New York, New York, 9 December 1929, d. 3 February 1989
John Cassavetes’s independent films challenge distinctions
between documentary and fiction films. Described
sometimes as home movies, they seem to capture authentic
moments of individuals’ experiences. The films’ intimate
quality reflects Cassavetes’s career-long collaboration with
cinematographer Al Ruban and actors such as Gena
Rowlands, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and Seymour Cassel.
Cassavetes’s films direct audience attention to the work
of actors—rather than the work of cinematographers,
editors, production designers, or directors—in part because
framing and editing choices are so directly keyed to actors’
movements and dramatic interactions. The films are also
uniquely actor-centered because they consistently include
brief passages in which the actors’ performances illuminate
their characters, further the plot, and, at the same time,
divert attention to the specific filmmaking moment that
captured the actors’ performances and the actors at work. In
contrast to mainstream films that invite audiences to shift
attention from the character to the star, largely because star
images help to flesh out formulaic characters, in Cassavetes’s
films there are moments when one or more of the actors
seem almost to drop out of character. These passing
moments prompt audiences to think about the actors on the
set as well as the characters in the story. While fleeting, these
moments deepen the emotional impact of scenes that follow,
for the viewer has been reminded that real people have been
laughing, crying, feeling awkward—even if only to create the
impression that their characters are having those experiences.
Considered retrospectively, these ostensibly unscripted and
unplanned moments also suggest a glimpse of the actors’
personal experience in that filmmaking moment.
Cassavetes’s respect for actors’ contributions issued
from his training and career as an actor. He is known for
his leading role in the television series Johnny Staccato
(1959–1960) and for his performances in films such as
Crime in the Streets (1956), Edge of the City (1957),
The Killers (1964), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and
Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Cassavetes’s own films are
enriched and complicated by his presence as an actor in
Husbands (1970), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), and
Opening Night (1977). As an actor-director committed to
exploring acting methods that facilitate actors’ connections
with each other and with the audience, in the late 1950s
Cassavetes cofounded the Variety Arts Studio, a workshop
that explored improvisation methods.
Like Italian neorealist films of the 1940s and 1950s,
Cassavetes’s films rely on location shooting, have an
episodic rather than classical linear structure, and feature
actors who are not encountered through and in terms of
their star images. They issue from the period when
television dramas crafted by writers such as Paddy
Chayefsky and directors such as Delbert Mann changed
American cinema by presenting audiences with
performances that captured the telling and intimate details
of working- and middle-class characters.
As with the work of Jean-Luc Godard, Cassavetes’s
films have been seen as a type of direct cinema, one that
acknowledges the filmmaker’s impact on the material
presented and that attempts to reflect or reveal the material
itself. For both filmmakers, actors function as graphic or
narrative components effectively controlled by the director
and as documentary evidence of social and emotional
realities that simply cannot be represented in a fictional film
narrative. Cassavetes has also been seen as an influence on
directors such as Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman, who
share with Cassavetes an abiding concern with the uneasy fit
between self-expression and social scripts.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Shadows (1959), Faces (1968), Husbands (1970), Minnie and
Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974),
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Opening Night
(1977), Gloria (1980), Love Streams (1984)
FURTHER READING
Carney, Ray. Cassavetes on Cassavetes. New York: Faber and
Faber, 2001.
———. The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism,
Modernism, and the Movies. Cambridge, UK, and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Charity, Tom. John Cassavetes: Lifeworks. London: Omnibus,
2001.
Kouvaros, George. Where Does It Happen? John Cassavetes and
Cinema at the Breaking Point. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2004.
Margulies, Ivone. ‘‘John Cassavetes: Amateur Director.’’
In New American Cinema, edited by Jon Lewis,
275–306. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
Cynthia Baron
18 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM