Cassavetes’ Opening Night (1977) and the hard truth about getting old
It is an incredible experience to watch Gena Rowlands playing troubled women in her ex-husband’s films because he, John Cassavetes, dealt with female struggles that Gena could reproduce in such a visceral way that we wonder how these roles have affected her in real life. Speaking of real life, women come to a point where aging hurts. It hurts because we are suffocated with renewer cosmetics, men cheating on their wives with younger women, and the weakness that their older image represents. Anyways, for men, it’s less painful to reach a certain age. It surely hurt Gena to have not seen herself with the same vivacity of her initial years as an actress. John was worried that this issue would torment his widow in Opening Night but there’s so much truth in Gena’s acting that we quite don’t know at what point she is representing herself in this imitation of life. In this film, she plays Myrtle Gordon, we don’t know her age, she instead, prefers to argue about how dull she has become with time than to reveal it. What we know is that just like Rowlands, she is a huge star and has been rehearsing for her latest play. Gordon drinks heavily and there’s a mourning look on her that seems like she’s in pain all the time.
On a rainy night, as she leaves the theater, a 17-year-old fan runs after her telling her how much she loves her, and a few seconds later, the girl is hit by a car and dies. This episode would disturb Myrtle deeply. She starts to have visions of the girl in her apartment. She seeks help from the writer of the play, Sarah Goode (Joan Blondell). Sarah recommends her to spiritualists only to find out that Myrtle’s problem is something they couldn’t understand. Her heavy drinking answers it all: she doesn’t accept her reality so she drinks to forget the pain she is facing. The girl who got killed looks a bit like her and her young desires annoy our protagonist. John is also in the cast of the play and plays her husband Maurice. Everybody in the cast admires her but no one seems to humanize to her agonizing pain. There are moments in which she opens up on the stage instead of following the script. She weeps endlessly and wants to take the play in another direction. She wants to feel alive and to play an old wife in her menopause period is just not authentic and life-changing. It’s an agreement to society’s impositions on women who age. Their problems are just marriage ones and there’s nothing interesting to be explored. No one else in the set seems to care about it. Sarah is much older and accepts what comes with her age.
Until the opening night of the play, Gena’s character displays self-destructive behavior. When she is asked what is lacking in the play she says “ hope”. Thus, her role is an intelligent and harsh criticism of the fatality that happens to old women when they see themselves limited, and hopeless and the word future seems like a joke to them. Although Myrtle was vulnerable even on the night of the play, we don’t know what came after it. The applauses of the audience and the smiles and compliments from the cast may be comfortable for a while. But what’s next ? Is there anything else besides life and art that can please her?
