Husbands

Director: John Cassavetes, John Cassavetes, John Cassavetes

1970 / 142min / DCP

Maximum-impact Cassavetes. The director-star pushes his actors and cinematic techniques to the extreme in this account of three married suburban New York dads—Cassavetes and two of his standbys, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk—who, reunited following a friend’s funeral, leave their wives and kids for a brutally masculine wet weekend of binge-drinking, skirt-chasing, and roughhousing. The rowdiest of all the writer-director’s films, Husbands brilliantly blurs the line between reality and performance—see for reference Cassavetes, Gazzara, and Falk’s carnival of bad behavior on The Dick Cavett Show while promoting the film.