John Cassavetes: at the Limits Of

JOHN CASSAVETES: AT THE LIMITS OF PERFORMANCE A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Cinema Studies in the University of Canterbury by Luke Towart University of Canterbury 2014 Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………....1 Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………..2 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………3 Chapter One: Performative Opposition: A Woman Under the Influence…………………….20 Chapter Two: A New Kind of Acting: Shadows……………………………………………..52 Chapter Three: Documentaries of Performance: Faces……………………………………...90 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………..122 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………...134 Filmography………………………………………………………………………………...141 1 Acknowledgements Thank you to Alan Wright, my primary supervisor, and Mary Wiles, my secondary supervisor, for their guidance whilst writing this thesis. 2 Abstract This thesis examines the central role of performance in three of the films of John Cassavetes. I identify Cassavetes’ unique approach to performance and analyze its development in A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Shadows (1959) and Faces (1968). In order to contextualize and define Cassavetes’ methodology, I compare and contrast each of these films in relation to two other relevant film movements. Cassavetes’ approach was dedicated to creating alternative forms of performative expression in film, yet his films are not solely independent from filmic history and can be read as being a reaction against established filmic structures. His films revolve around autonomous performances that often defy and deconstruct traditional concepts of genre, narrative structure and character. Cassavetes’ films are deeply concerned with their characters’ isolation and inability to communicate with one another, yet refrain from traditional or even abstract constructions of meaning in favour of a focus on spontaneous, unstructured performance of character. Cassavetes was devoted to exploring the details of personal relationships, identity and social interaction. In his films, acting and the creation of character depicts the blurred divide between artifice and reality that exists within much social performance in lived experience. The filmmaking process itself was crucial in the generation of improvisatory performances in Cassavetes’ films. His work displays an intertwinement of creative process and the final filmic form. 3 Introduction A film is not life, its merely film stock! That’s why a film always has to force itself to be extremely “real” – so people can accept it and react. (42) - John Cassavetes, Positif 205 (April 1978) John Cassavetes had a passion for film, but was aware of its limitations and consistently pushed against them. Cassavetes recognized film as an artificial medium, but treated that as its strength. Traditional cinema’s tendency to be fixed, representative and linear could be opposed; its ability to restrain could be tested and subverted. Cassavetes believed that actors’ performances were central to a film’s ability to achieve a sense of subversive vitality against the restraints of narrative filmmaking (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 44-45). The director disdained terms such as “playing a role,” he viewed the creation of character as an imperfect alliance of personal self and fictional situation (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 210). The key to forcing film to be “real” is to acknowledge the artifice inherent within its construction. The following thesis will examine the central role of performance in three of the films of John Cassavetes. I will analyze Cassavetes’ approach to encouraging and representing his actors’ performances, which often transgressed established performative and filmic boundaries. At the same time, I will investigate how the results of Cassavetes’ approach to acting relate to his films’ ongoing themes concerning performance in everyday life. Although Cassavetes allowed his actor’s to perform in a central and creatively free position, they are always framed or “forced” into filmic methods. This thesis will aim to explore how Cassavetes merges his focus on performance with his use of the filmic medium. I will examine how Cassavetes subverts and challenges filmic form by focusing on performance as fundamentally unstable, complicating narrative, dramatic interaction and 4 character. As a part of this process I will theoretically position each chapter’s main film of interest between two other related filmic movements, in order to distinguish Cassavetes’ techniques and intentions regarding performance, and to elucidate the development of his practice and thematic outlook. Shadows (1959), Faces (1968) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974) all reflect Cassavetes’ passionate belief that the actor, not the director, should be the primary creative force during the production of a film. This attitude drastically affected these films’ dramatic interactions and the visual style used to represent them. In the introduction to his biography of the director, John Cassavetes: Lifeworks, Tom Charity asserts that Cassavetes “developed a non-aesthetic aesthetic structured around the freedom of the actor” (xi). During interviews, the filmmaker went to great pains to describe the methodology used to allow his actors the freedom he desired them to have, but is perhaps best explained by his simple observation that “The actor has to conform to the camera positions and the lights, and it should be the other way around” (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 151). His film sets were lighted generally, rather than using specific marks that dictated an actor’s movement. A combination of hand-held camera and fixed long shots were favored, again giving actors freedom of movement and the ability to concentrate solely on their performance (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 153). Finally, whilst dialogue and events were, for the most part, scripted, actors’ interpretation of character and their delivery was autonomous and, according to Cassavetes, often spontaneously improvised. The director himself effectively summarized this approach when he stated that within his films “The emotion was improvisation. The lines were written. The attitudes were improvised” (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 161). Cassavetes’ opinions and beliefs concerning filmmaking originate in his unhappy early career as a working actor within Hollywood, where he was unable to gain a sense of 5 creative satisfaction due to what he saw as Hollywood’s institutional tendency to “fight creativity” (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 41-42). The frustration Cassavetes experienced as a working actor contributed to his decision to open “The Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop,” an acting school that enabled the creative gestation of his first film, Shadows, to occur (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 47-49). After the release of Shadows, Cassavetes was offered a position as a producer-director for Paramount Pictures, where he made Too Late Blues (1961) and A Child is Waiting (1963). However both films were creatively compromised, with the studio refusing his casting and location suggestions and insisting on the insertion of extra scenes for Too Late Blues (Charity, Lifeworks 39), and re-editing a “more sentimental” version of A Child is Waiting without Cassavetes’ permission (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 122-123). These negative experiences resulted in Cassavetes’ films being reactively oppositional to the interfering methods of the Hollywood production line. By 1963, Cassavetes had been creatively stifled and controlled as both an actor and a director. His films reflect an attempt to create a constructive middle ground between both roles that encouraged constant autonomy and creative fulfillment. Cassavetes’ policy of non-interference even went so far as to define his own role as simply setting up an “atmosphere” in which his actors could perform freely, without feeling pressured or self-conscious (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 153-154). At the end of this particular elucidation Cassavetes concludes with his view that “You must charge the atmosphere constantly, and you must do it honestly” (Cassavetes on Cassavetes 154). However, this quote is a telling one. Behind the director’s cultivated policy of passive non-interference hid an intention and methodology that “charges” his films with a tendency to deconstruct existing performative structures. Cassavetes’ directorial spontaneity, his willingness to encourage and allow actors to experiment and test their limits (Cassavetes on 6 Cassavetes 167-168), resulted in a two-way creative bond between the director and his actors. Cassavetes’ use of the word “honestly” is also significant. Throughout his filmography the director created an evolving dramatic dialogue between truth and artifice, specifically in terms of social behavior and interaction. For Cassavetes, an actor’s performance in a film could parallel and illuminate the mechanics and nature of social performance in reality. Scholarly work on Cassavetes has consistently recognized the director’s preoccupation with notions of truth and artifice. Films such as Shadows and Faces have narratives that can be read as long-form studies on the difficulty of social roles and expectations. They feature characters who endlessly take on personas and put on acts in order to survive in their social environment, whilst also sometimes attempting to defy those roles and break free. This kind of reading is relevant but also restrains other possible interpretations of how the dynamic between truth and artifice operates in Cassavetes’ films. Ray Carney, a leading

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