The Austin Film Society’s John Cassavetes Film Series will screen on Tuesdays at 7pm in the Texas Union Theatre. Admission is free.


Shadows
photograph courtesy of Photofest

SHADOWS (Jan. 27)
with Lelia Goldoni, Ben Carruthers (1959, 87min.)

Cassavetes’ first time out as director proves to be a hand grenade of a film. Cassavetes takes on interracial relationships and questions of “passing” in a film that cracked the formality of conventional Hollywood scene structure.

Husbands
photograph courtesy of Photofest

HUSBANDS (Feb. 3)
with Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk , John Cassavetes. (1970, 131 min.)

Following the death of a mutual friend, Archie, Harry, and Gus embark on a lost weekend in which they try to come to grips with the passing of their youth and the facts of adult life.

MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ (Feb. 10)
with Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel. (1971, 114 min.)

Rowlands delivers a sympathetic though unsentimental portrayal of a lonely museum curator who falls in love with wild parking lot attendant Cassel. Despite their various incompatabilities, the two decide to give it a chance, and their somewhat idiosyncratic relationship is genuinely felt. In what is a witty and sensitive picture of a pair of misfits, Cassavetes paints a love story with truth instead of glamour.

A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (Feb. 17)
with Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk. (1974, 155 min.)

Unconditional love permeates the lives of Falk and Rowlands, middle-class parents of three children. Cassavetes is perceptive and exacting in his exploration of the volatile marriage between a blue-collar worker and his wife (who is arguably insane). Passionate and compelling, this is quintessential Cassavetes.

THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (Feb. 24)
with Ben Gazzara, Timothy Carey, (1976, 109 min.)

Cassavetes’ rare foray into genre filmmaking resulted in what is perhaps the only cinema verite mob movie in cinema history. Ben Gazzara gives his finest performance as a nightclub owner coerced into murdering a Chinese crime lord. Cassavetes developed the story with Martin Scorsese.

This article appears in January 23 • 1998 and January 23 • 1998 (Cover).

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US