From my favorite movies..

disgusting, overrated, pointless

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Over the top works of art can't be objectively judged. You ever crave it or you are sated. But if you want it, there's "Opening Night." If you start with a character holding a cigarette in her mouth, trying to take a drink from a flask, and hoisting shopping bags, and the actress has a mouth like Lauren Bacall, you are already at the edge of the roof. The movie that invited the characters to "fasten their seat belts" was already a calmer affair. Another comparison is "The Clouds of Sils Maria," where Juliette Binoche also plays an actress who likes to take a drink, may fly to extremes, but also controls it in the interests of a script or a public event. For Gena Rowlands in "Opening Night" there's no escape from a camera very close up, her character crashing. The ending, however, is like a satyr play at the end of an afternoon of tragedy.

The performances (how much was improvised?) save this film but it is deeply flawed.The main problem that I had with this movie is that the characters are so unappealing. Myrtle is so difficult to work with, it is strange how *everyone* from the director down to the doorman is in love with her. And Manny and co are no better - they blithely drive away from a fatal car accident - the dinner at the restaurant must have been really good! The plot is very contrived - since Myrtle obviously hates the play why did she sign up for it? And what director would not have an understudy ready to fill in on opening night for such an unreliable and unstable actress? There are much better films out there with the "performer goes crazy" theme - watch those instead.

Myrtle Gordon is like the cinematic daughter of Margo Channing, the capricious diva who couldn't handle the 'dura lex' of numbers in "All About Eve", and the mother of Nina Sayer who tried to reach a level of self-destructive perfection to better capture the essence of her titular character, "Black Swan".It's a pity that "Opening Night" is not as revered as these two masterpieces … as it's a powerful and brutal depiction of the alienating effect of passion devouring self-awareness. It embarks us for a thrilling ride with Myrtle Gordon, played in an Oscar worthy performance by an extraordinary Gena Rowlands, who endures a terrible middle-age crisis, with alcohol as the only escapism from an asphyxiating stardom."Opening Night" opens a pivotal moment in Myrtle's life, basically trying to find herself, torn between the reality of a mysterious middle life age and a desperate attempt to seize the roses of a lost youth. This youth is incarnated by the hallucination of Nancy, a young overly emotional fan who was accidentally killed by a car, on a dark rainy night, right after having embraced Myrtle, visibly touched by her cries and sincere adoration. This brief and macabre encounter resonates like a symbolic farewell to youth … an intolerable situation aggravated by Myrtle's next role of an 'old' woman named Virginia.Basically, Myrtle is torn between two extreme perceptions of her condition, Nancy, eternally young, and Virginia's, whose "Second Woman" titular nickname denotes the idea of a second virginity, as to imply, that age, is synonym of asexuality, absence of desire, menopause … with pause as a static, obedient position Myrtle, absorbed by her teenage angst-like crisis, can't tolerate. But this is Myrtle's conception of age; Cassavettes offers another one, more positive.Cassavettes describes every wrinkle in an old person's face as a heritage from the past, painful, happy, emotional, a precious memory cherished like a treasure. Aging is also incarnated by the character of Joan Blondell, Sarah Goode, the 65-year old woman who wrote the play, she and Rowlands, beautifully underline the self-reflexive nature of the film. The wise Sarah tries to explain that age is less a doom than an enrichment, but she forgets two essential elements on Myrtle's personality, which explain her defensive attitude and obstinacy in not telling her age.First, Myrtle is an actress so dedicated to her profession that her aura transcends the limits of stage, Manny Victor, the director, played by the magnetic and suave Ben Gazzara is like hypnotized by Myrtle, and shows an extreme patience despite her incessant caprices. Secondly, Myrtle can't embody Virginia, as she rejects the sinister reality that aging can crystallize, still convinced about Nancy's inner youth inhabiting her heart. The conflict is here, Myrtle is so dedicated to one character that if she ever tried to Virginia, she will become Virginia, and then she must overpower this "Second Woman" even if it implies a total detachment from Sarah, an obvious motherly figure. This rebellion leads to some very eloquent moments in their awkwardness.I realized while watching "The Opening Night" how my shy nature makes me fear improvisation, because I hate embarrassing situation, but in Cassavetes' view, improvisation is totally conscious. Myrtle doesn't know what to say, but she know what she's doing, hence the suspenseful embarrassing moments where she doesn't get up after a 'slap' or when she leaves an actor who tries to handle the critical situation by mechanical laughs, while a close-up shows Cassavettes' close-up show his tongue nervously rolling in his mouth, expecting boos like the explosion of a psychological ticking bomb. No other film-maker than John Cassavettes had this ability to make my heart pound with such realistic situations.The film is full of such moments, where the eye of the camera shows what the stage spectator can't. The theater becomes an allegory of our own lives, while the eye of the cinema vérité allows us to see what really goes backstage. The truth, the authenticity this eternal quest of Cassavettes found an even more powerful meaning with the theater, which is the Art where no mistake is allowed. But in a masterstroke, Cassavettes reconciles the two notions by showing that even in a restricting context, you can improvise and touch the hearts.Virginia's unpredictability makes everybody nervous, but there's something that rings profoundly true, because she –like in real life- doesn't do what she's told to do, she just expresses feelings. The whole role is about overcoming an intolerable reality, and Myrtle's improvisation is like a psychological rodeo where at any moments, she can fall. But as Cassavettes, an artist, above anything must "dare to fail".And failure was a close call: in a booze-driven self-destructive impulse, Myrtle drinks, tries to flirt with Nancy in one side, and dominate Virginia in another, in the play, no one knew how to handle her during the Opening Night in Broadway. Sarah was resigned while Manny, finally punished her by letting her crawl in the floor while she was dead drunk, and maybe this sudden outburst of violence ignited the flame burning in Myrtle's heart … Myrtle who, in a climactic fight, got rid of Nancy because she understood that was the salvation, the only way to understand and dominate Virginia.Myrtle domesticated all her fears and gained enough courage to finally be 'herself' on-stage, by commanding the spirit of the Second Woman. Her improvisation inspired Cassavettes' improvisation, and the result was transcending to a point we could wonder if the public didn't applaud for John and Gena, a touching inside joke confirmed by the presence of old friends like Peter Falk, and Seymour Cassel at the premiere. Myrtle proved Cassavettes' theory that life is all about 'improvising and daring to fail'.Did she stop drinking? Is her existential crisis over? Cassavettes doesn't embarrass himself with such certitudes, "Opening Night" is simply an existential coming-of-age story and a poignant hymn for self-conquest

I was absolutely blown away by John Cassavetes's Opening Night. It's the first movie of his that I've seen that seems to be on a bigger scale, thus it feels more mainstream, but it still doesn't feel as if he grounded himself any more than he has in his previous films. That is perhaps what makes it so intense. There is also something undoubtedly cathartic about watching this movie.It's about what in fact Cassavetes has made a staple of his career, an ideal that he has expressed behind the camera throughout his career as a director and is here expressing it in front. Rowlands's character, middle-aged stage actress Myrtle Gordon, cannot bring herself to play her role in the upcoming production as written so she uncalculatedly follows impulse after impulse, resulting in what appears to be chaos on stage, until she finds the right one. It's a daringly abstract premise.This is a movie that does not fail to capture the innate steering that one goes through during an emotional cleansing. No one understands why Myrtle does many of the things she does, and it is seen and even portrayed as something destructive, yet it just might be the best thing for her. It may be a cleansing rather than a breakdown. A withdrawal, a cocoon, a rebellion, it all culminates into a meltdown. Cassavetes gives her character a brutally real touch, which is that early on, she is ardently arguing that she has nothing in common with her character, yet she is in quiet but emotionally corroding fear that the opposite is true.The last scene, the climactic performance that Myrtle shares with a character painfully estranged from her who is acting with her, is one of the most interesting, hilarious, hard-hitting, enlightening, and enjoyable moments I've ever seen in a movie.