HUSBANDS
US, 1971, 129 minutes, Colour.
John Cassavetes, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara.
Directed by John Cassavetes.
Husbands is not everybody's film. It is really an underground film, financed by a major company and released commercially. John Cassavetes, a popular actor (from A Man is Ten Feet Tall to Rosemary's Baby) has made several well received features, especially Shadows and Faces. Here he has written, acted in and directed, in collaboration with friends Falk and Gazzara, a slice of life, a chapter in the middle of three men's lives.
The technique of the film is prepared improvising. Some of it goes on too long. Some scenes are very moving. The frog-like woman in the London club is a masterpiece of horror; the laughing woman in the dentist's chair is contagiously hilarious. The film does not verbally specify its point or purpose, and audiences who rely on such help will find the film long, too episodic and generally directionless. However, viewed as three men being themselves for a while, the film shows us human beings and life. It is a catalogue of incidents, certainly at no real depth. But it asks us to react to them. It wants some depth response in us; so the film is really our individual reactions to the personalities, behaviour of these adolescent, man-in-the-street, husbands.
1. An interesting film? Why?
2. Rambling, too improvised?
3. The film was obviously a slice of life, without a contrived beg-inning or end. Did this satisfy you, or would you have preferred a better-planned film?
4. What did you learn about these husbands, about husband-wife relationships from a man's point of view?
5. Since this was an episodic, slice-of-life film, a good way to discuss its issues and their impact would be to take each episode, consider its point, ask why it was included in the film, ask what it revealed about Gus, Archie, and Harry.
- the opening good-friends' stills and the noise;
- the funeral (smoking, manners, grief);
- the taxi ride and Archie’s growling;
- the decision to go on a bender;
- the sports' sequences;
- acting like kids on the street, the rumpus;
- the drunks and the song competition;
- the toilet discussions, being sick, aloneness;
- Harry's clash with his wife and her mother, his changing his clothes and their not liking it;
- their jobs, especially the dentist scene, Harry at work;
- ringing their wives and going to London;
- locking themselves into London clubs and drinks, the symbol of the rain;
- choosing their rooms at the hotel;
- their gambling, Archie and the English, the old painted woman;
- Mary and Gus and 'whisky';
- dinner in their rooms;
- the three encounters with the girls;
- why did Gus and Archie fail? (Because they were husbands?)
- why did Harry succeed and change? the party in his room?
- the return home.
6. Why was Harry different from Gus and Archie (touchier, more 'class', we see his wife and mother-in-law, more of a lover, greater yearning to be free)?
7. What kind of husbands were Gus and Archie?
8. What picture of the rest of mankind did the film give - the people at the bender with their songs.. the girls in London, the frog-like woman at the club?
9. Do you think more films should be made like this, just insights into people?
10. Many consider the film quite good, but ultimately shallow, even callow, not getting us very far in insights. Do you agree?
