Husbands

Husbands
Directed by	John Cassavetes
Produced by	Al Ruban
Written by	John Cassavetes
Starring	Ben Gazzara Peter Falk John Cassavetes Jenny Runacre Jenny Lee Wright Noelle Kao
Cinematography	Victor Kemper
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	December 1970
Running time	138 min.
Language	English

Husbands is a 1970 film written and directed by John Cassavetes. This ensemble film, which describes three middle class men in the throes of a midlife crisis, stars Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk and Cassavetes.

The film, in cinéma vérité style, was described by Time magazine as Cassevetes' finest work while condemned by other prominent critics^[1][2][3]. It consisted largely of lengthy improvisations by the cast, and provides what one recent critic described as a "devastatingly bleak view of the emptiness of suburban life."^[4]

Plot summary

Gus, Harry, and Archie (Cassavetes, Gazzara and Falk, respectively) are three husbands with families in suburban New York. All are professional men. As the film begins, they are shaken when their best friend suddenly dies of a heart attack.^[5]

They have difficulty coping with the death, and spend two days hanging out, playing basketball, sleeping in the subways, and drinking. Gus and Archie are ready to go back home, but Harry has a vicious argument with his wife. He decides to fly to London, and the other two go with him.^[5]

They check into an expensive hotel, dress in formal clothing, and meet three young women at a gambling casino. They go back to their rooms with the women. Gus pairs off with Mary Tynan (Jenny Runacre), Archie with Julie (Noelle Kao), a young Asian woman who cannot speak English, and Harry pairs with Pearl Billingham (Jenny Lee Wright).^[5]

Gus and Archie decide to go back to New York, but they cannot convince Harry to leave with them. After another party in London, Gus and Archie buy gifts for their families and return home.^[5]

Cast notes

Falk and Gazzara appeared in subsequent Cassavetes films, with Gazzara appearing in Opening Night (1977) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), and Falk appearing in A Woman Under the Influence (1974).

In his 2006 memoir, Just One More Thing, Falk said that he was asked by Cassaveetes to appear in Husbands at a lunch meeting at which Cassavetes agreed to appear with Falk in the Elaine May film Mikey and Nicky.^[6]

Falk said that he and Gazzara contributed to the Husbands script, but that the story, structure and scenes were devised by Cassavetes. Falks suggested the scene at the end of the movie where Archie and Gus arrive home and divide which gifts go to whom. A scene between Archie and Julie was improvised in a hotel room, with Cassavetes at the camera and no other crew present.^[6]

Critical reception

Husbands was viewed as a landmark film by LIFE magazine and some prominent critics, while condemned by Pauline Kael and others.

The film received a dramatically disparate reception, with some prominent critics loving the film while others hating it. LIFE magazine put Cassavetes and the two other Husbands stars on its cover, and Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel put the film on his list of top ten films of the year.^[7]

Critic Jay Cocks said in TIME magazine that "Husbands may be one of the best movies anyone will ever see. It is certainly the best movie anyone will ever live through." He described it as an important and great film, and as Cassavetes' finest work.^[1] Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert said that "seldom has Time given a better review to a worse movie."^[8]

New Yorker critic Pauline Kael described Husbands as "infantile and offensive."^[2]

Writing in The New York Times, Vincent Canby said the film, like Faces, which was "rambling and funny and accurate, and which I admired, the new film demonstrates a concern for panicky, inarticulate squares that is so unpatronizing that it comes close to being reverential in a solemnly religious sense." But Canby said the film was "unbearably long," and said, "It's as if someone decided to photograph a tug-of-war and photographed only the rope between the contestants." He said of the three characters that "when it's all over, they are tired, but not much wiser—which is pretty much the sum and substance of Husbands."^[3]

Ebert's review said that Husbands "is disappointing in the way Antonioni's Zabriskie Point was. It shows an important director not merely failing, but not even understanding why." Ebert said that the actors were unsuccessful in their attempts to improvise: "There are long passages of dialogue in which the actors seem to be trying to think of something to say."^[8] A Cleveland Press critic said that "the dialog consists of fragments, of exclamations, of three actors trying to upstage each other. What has been done is undisciplined and what has been given us is unselective. The camera runs and simply photographs everything that passes before it. The microphone listens. It is like a big budget home movie."^[9]

More recent critics have accepted the film's shortcomings while noting its deeper meaning. Writing in 2007, The Guardian's critic John Sutherland said that "Sigmund Freud himself could not have done the job more efficiently. It's a film that - like much of Cassavetes' work - is excessively boring, hard to follow, and extraordinarily illuminating about masculinity and its incorrigible delusions."^[10]

References

External links

• Husbands at the Internet Movie Database
• Husbands at Allmovie
• Husbands at Rotten Tomatoes
• Excerpt of Ray Carney on Husbands