opening night

Director: John Cassavetes, John Cassavetes, John Cassavetes, John Cassavetes

1977 / 144min / DCP

Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands), an actress entering her Grand Dame years, is in final rehearsals for a play when a disturbed young fan is killed in front of her. The trauma of the sight drives Gordon off the rails, leading her to declare war on her director, her co-star, and the play itself. “I’ll do anything to make my characters more authentic,” Gordon says, while playwright Joan Blondell insists her star needs only read her lines “with some feeling.” Are Myrtle’s disruptions a star trip? Has she gone mad? Or is she opening up a vein to salvage a terrible play? These and other questions are posed by Opening Night, a startlingly raw cinematic representation of actors’ lives on-stage and off, staged and filmed by Cassavetes in front of a live audience.