In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Let me start by saying that Cassavetes is a brilliant director. Only sometimes, brilliance coupled with a bold desire to take risks can end up landing on its derriere, especially if it happens after a success such as 'Faces'. And that is exactly what 'Husbands' does. The story is quite weak, the resolution is obscure, and all we're left with is watching three guys get drunk and being nasty. Who cares? I certainly don't. There's nothing to root for here, nobody to sympathize with. Some will argue that this is simply Cassavetes' style and a pseudo-sequel to 'Faces'. But the lower budget 'Faces', as stretched out and not plot driven as it was, was considerably more effective in how it put across interesting characters and showed a slice of life. 'Husbands' by comparison shows a bunch of aimless characters with dialog that stretches the realms of how most people talk and act. That's not to say that Husbands doesn't have some interesting moments. For students of Cassavetes technique there are a few good scenes worth attention on their own (one of my favorite is when Cassavetes orders room service). But individual scenes, no matter how well executed, do not a film make. It's very unfortunate because this film had everything going for it: a phenomenal cast, a talented director, great cinematography, and even a suitable dramatic premise. But the desire to get cute with dialog and getting overly absorbed in character psychology comes at cost to saying something substantive. What a shame, this could have been such a great film.

John Cassavetes was a filmmaker who made his independent films in two primary modes: brilliant character-driven masterpieces like Faces, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night, or interesting character-driven mediocrities with 'moments,' like Shadows, A Woman Under The Influence, and Gloria. His 1970 film, Husbands, however, falls somewhere in between. It's nowhere near a great film, for it is poorly edited and, surprisingly, poorly scripted, most of the time. But, there are certain scenes that are not overly long and utterly pointless. And in these scenes lie the seeds for what could have been a brilliant, if not great, film. As it is, though, the 142 minute DVD version of the film, released by Columbia and Sony Pictures, plays out more like the opening scene of the film that came before it, Faces. That film had an opening scene of drunken revelry and misery of the sort never before committed to celluloid. The difference is that it, for all its greatness and minor flaws, ran only about 20 minutes into that film. Now, extend that scene and try to cobble and sustain a film narrative about seven times its length, and the problems with Husbands becomes obvious. It simply needed the touch of a good editor.Proof of this claim comes, in fact, from the brief final scene of the film where the character played by Cassavetes himself (Gus) returns home after a drunken weekend in London, England, with two other buddies mourning the loss of a fourth pal, to confront his crying daughter and mischievous son in his driveway, as they call on there never seen mom to tell her that daddy is home to take his lumps. This scene is poetic, spare, and filled with realism. By contrast, far too many scenes in Husbands are bloated, overly long, pointless, and prosaic- in the worst sense. The whole film opens with still photos of four fortyish male friends, then cuts to the funeral of one of them, Stu (in the photos portrayed by Cassavetes' wife, Gena Rowlands' real life brother, David Rowlands). Interestingly, the putative main character of the film makes his exit from the film at this point. Another good touch, in fact, is that, save for the wife of Harry (Ben Gazzara)- who works at an advertising agency, in a brief scene of domestic violence, no other wives make an appearance. The two other surviving members of the male quartet are Gus (Cassavetes himself)- a dentist, and Archie (Peter Falk)- profession unknown.No amount of rewatching can exorcise the screenplay's flaws which make this film merely a good and interesting one, rather than a masterpiece. Far too much testosterone in place of intelligence, and a too easy reliance on melodrama over real drama make the film something that a great film never is: soap operatic. A better editing job would have allowed the film to have been shaped into a coherent whole, rather than an often formless mess. The old maxim about films being made or broken in the editing room seems to have been uttered for films like this. Husbands is one of those films that, in a sense, makes one wish for what could have been, but is good enough that what is can satisfy, at least to a point. Beyond the point, though, the sky is how you make it.

The very first bit of dialogue is the kind of introductory exposition you get and gradually learn the rhythm of from a movie that is testing you. Being a film by John Cassavetes, it shall be one of those films that leaves you unsure of what to think of it at all, except that you were strangely engrossed in many scenes, only not quite like other examples of this sort of movie experience. His sense of pace is epic, but the subjects that fascinate him are granular in scale. Husbands is a Cassavetes film that even experienced Cassavetes film watchers aren't quite prepared for. It is a formalistically rebellious, gravely intimate reflection of the bareness of suburban life, magnified 500%, unpatronizing to and violatingly honest about its anxious, inarticulate sticks in the mud who have no idea what they're feeling while they're undergoing their feelings.The dialogue is comprised of unfinished thoughts, of knee-jerk shouts, not to mention three actors with egos more massive than the movie's gaps of seeming inertia. The camera just rolls and the microphone just hears. That we're seeing and hearing anything in particular is not as central as the fact that we are indeed looking and listening.Cassavetes tries so hard to seize and squeeze every possibility of any moments that catch what we all know happens between concept and execution. Moments that don't seem scriptable, that hardly seem describable. When we're with somebody but before anyone's thought of anything to say, or when we are distracted into an unthinking transition, anything impulsive or seemingly without thought. I might even go so far as to say the whole film seems involuntary. And what's more, it is predominantly comprised of Cassavetes' trademark scenes of agonizing discomfort.The most emboldened stand-out in this film's succession of scenes of that nature is an inordinately long one in which Cassavetes, Gazzara and Falk sit with a table of friends and family in a bar, not a tissue of their body left dry of alcohol, taking random turns singing traditional folk songs, and after awhile---and I mean awhile---one person begins singing, and the three jeer them into silence, then tell her to try again. They jeer her quiet again, and again and again and again until finally, after anyone in her position would still be cooperating, they praise her for finally getting it right. This to me represents what has to be the creative process for actors in a Cassavetes film, especially the Cassavetes film Husbands. There seems to be no frontal lobe left in any actor.Husbands is described sometimes as a comedy. Well, I don't know if it's a comedy, but is a drama with sporadic moments of strange, seemingly incidental humor. There is an unusually brief scene where Gazzara visits his office and is greeted by an outlandishly goofy colleague. When the three friends are electrified with excitement about going to London, we cut to London, where it's dreary and pouring rain. There doesn't seem to be a way to pinpoint the nature of the movie's tone, or its structure at all. Like I said, it puts you to the test, and the test is to accept the film on its terms. If you do, you can be moved by the nature of its point of view and be open to the nature of your own reactions to it.

I began watching this awful mess on TCM tonight at 9:45 and found myself clicking for something better about 15 minutes into it. In fact, I checked my e-mail while I was watching and found a message from a friend discussing the ancient religious philosopher Pelagius. He wrote: Pelagius was an early advocate of the doctrine of salvation by works, as opposed to the doctrine of salvation by faith.I immediately declared myself a Pelagian and promised to go to this website and warn others not to watch this movie in order to do a good work--in order to avoid any further suffering that might be endured by anyone who might tempted to watch this train-wreck in the future.Gazzara, Falk and Cassavettes were good friends, I believe. How they got some studio to finance their time in New York and London is something we'll all never know. The first hour of the movie is dominated by an interminably long scene in a New York City bar that could have only been there to jack-up concessions sales for the theaters back in 1970 that had the nerve to screen this nonsense. They must have been flooding the lobby in droves searching for candy, popcorn or poison with which to kill themselves.I can't tell you anything about the second hour of the movie, because I didn't have the stomach to watch it through to the end.