Make the Case: 5 Best Gena Rowlands Movies

There is more to the filmography of the legendary Gena Rowlands than anxiety. The best Gena Rowlands movies do tend to involve women who are processing a monumental nervous breakdown. That is the basic outline for some of her most memorable performances. Like all any actor who becomes known for playing a certain type, Rowlands has repeatedly gone beyond the basics of what you’d expect from characters who have had enough of one thing or another. Or the characters who have had enough of literally everything, all at once.

What makes each of Gena Rowlands’ best movie roles distinctive, which in turn makes Gena Rowlands one of the finest actors of the past 60+ years, is the fact that she understands that there is no such thing as a clear, consistent approach to playing wounded, desperate, heroic people. She found something unique in the best examples of the characters she at least seemed to have an affinity for.

Her character in A Woman Under the Influence, one of the many essential films she made with her husband, the writer/director/actor John Cassavetes, is nothing like her character in Faces. Those characters are nothing like the women she played in films like Opening Night, The Neon Bible, or even in lighthearted stuff like Hope Floats or The Notebook. We can’t help but focus on her films with John Cassavetes, but it is important to keep in mind that she didn’t need him directing to give a performance that would find and reach deep into the audience.

As she has proven repeatedly throughout the years, her versatility and intensity have shined throughout a career of more than 100 film, television, and theater credits.

At age 89, and with a career that is still active (her last film appearance was in 2014), it is certainly worth appreciating one of film’s longest running, most impressive contemporary performers.

 

1. A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

Director: John Cassavetes

By 1974, Gena Rowlands had already been an actress in film and TV for sixteen years. In movies like Machine Gun McCain and Lonely Are the Brave, you can easily appreciate her as an intense, memorable actress. She showcases from the beginning of her career the ability to stand against anyone she shared the screen with. Her characters suggested women who were sick to death of their surroundings, their friends, and often the men who haunted their doorsteps. She suggests a lot with characters who weren’t necessarily written that way.

A Woman Under the Influence is something altogether different. One of the best of her collaborations with Cassavetes, the film is an arresting, exhausting descent into a wife and mother who is struggling to keep herself together. Rowlands creates an Oscar-nominated character who never stops stunning us, forcing us to contend with her complexities, her confusion, and her fearless determination to survive. Her scenes with Peter Falk as her equally-sympathetic husband stand among the best moments either performer ever committed to the screen.

 

2. Opening Night (1977)

Director: John Cassavetes

Rowlands did not just play exhausted, half-crazed women of passion, creativity, and trying times when she worked with Cassavetes. However, they do offer many of her best moments as an actress, particularly when Cassavetes directed. This is at least partially because Opening Night and A Woman Under the Influence, each in a completely different way, aspire to create women who are not simply crazy. In Opening Night, Myrtle Gordon, a successful actress on the verge of a complete breakdown, is not simply some lunatic who needs to get some rest. It is hard to imagine that anyone involved in this mesmerizing film would settle for something so simple.

Opening Night gives Rowlands even more room to explore this character than virtually any other collaboration with her husband. The movie from start to finish is a stellar example of what they could accomplish together. This is never more apparent than in the last half or so of the movie, in which Myrtle, on opening night of a heavyweight Broadway plan, decides to leave the script behind. The only other person is the play’s costar, played by Cassavetes. The on-stage moments between the two, played for an actual audience who had no idea what might happen, is one of the most supremely enjoyable moments in the history of film. Gena Rowlands is the foundation of that fact.

 

3. Tempest (1982)

Director: Paul Mazursky

If anyone could nail a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s final play with special attention towards the absurdity of the story, it was Paul Mazursky. The director of movies like Harry and Tonto, An Unmarried Woman, and Down and Out in Beverly Hills could be savage towards his characters, but he could also be sweet. At his best, he could brilliantly turn out whatever made sense for the characters and story.

Tempest is fairly light, but it likes all of its offbeat characters. It particularly likes Rowlands as Antonia Dimitrius, with John Cassavetes as the middle-aged husband who decides to take off for a Greek Island with his daughter (Molly Ringwald’s first film). Cassavetes willingness to be an inspired, unpredictable, and ultimately charming asshole is amazing foil for Rowlands as Antonia. The story has always let Antonia have way more than fun than just about anyone. Rowlands is the best part about this ensemble. She steals every scene.

 

4. Night on Earth (1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKC0ab0DZJ0

Director: Jim Jarmusch

This collection of five vignettes by writer/director Jim Jarmusch is enjoyable from start to finish. The film takes us through not only five stories, but five different parts of the world. The main thread shared by all stories is that they involve a cab driver and a passenger. Jarmusch gets a lot of mileage from the concept, enjoying quirky character studies that engage you with natural developments, and people who are generally easy to like.

One of the best segments in the movie belongs to Rowlands as a Hollywood executive, with a young Winona Ryder as her taxi driver. The resulting conversation reveals humorous volumes about the two women. Ryder holds her own against one of the most dynamic actresses of all time, and Rowlands proves in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t need a ton of screen time to be memorable.

 

5. Hysterical Blindness (2002)

Director: Mira Nair

This 2002 HBO movie from the underappreciated Mira Nair occasionally misses with its story, in which two friends (Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis) maintain a friendship and search for companionship in 1980s New Jersey. Hysterical Blindness wins out in the end with a strong final act, and its themes and perspectives leave you with an underrated HBO drama that deserves renewed attention.

Rightfully so, Gena Rowlands won an Emmy for her portrayal of Virginia, the mother of Uma Thurman’s disenchanted 30-something. While Virginia’s side-plot with fellow Cassavetes regular Ben Gazzara makes for some enjoyable moments, simply to have them play off each other, Rowlands excels with the character to a degree that puts her somewhere else entirely from everyone else in this film. It is one of the best depictions of aging under the weight of loneliness you probably haven’t seen.