Last night, after an exhausting week of juggling work, I saw the John Cassavetes film Gloria (1980) along with members of Kino Clubhouse. The heavily improvised film, iconic of Cassavetes’ fashion of filmmaking stars his partner and muse the marvelous Gena Rowlands.
There are so many John Cassavetes’ classics that I was fazed that I didn’t know about this one. Paola, a member and visual arts educator recommended this film of choice for us to watch that night.
Gloria starts with a woman riding a bus hurriedly getting back to her small Bronx apartment she shares with her family. The father or husband is hiding from the Mafia who are already in the building trying to find him. The family doesn’t have much time. The father knows he is going to be killed any moment. He tells his little son Phil, “You’re the man of the family now…You’re the man of the house.” Then he gives Phil to Gloria, a neighbor living on the same floor, to protect. All this happening before the 10-minute mark.
I think the messiness of the film is the film’s potency – dropping us, the viewers into the chaos of Gloria’s mess of trouble. So much of the film’s pull in the kid actor’s tough, wiser-than-his-years machismo character that the film should have been called Phil, not Gloria. Sometimes Phil’s delivery of his responses to Gloria seemed to be spoon-fed by the director. Cassavetes seemed to not sensationalize the Mafia as a caricature at the expense of portraying stereotypes of Puerto Ricans in 1970s New York City. Then again, Gloria would have been another film if written and directed by a Puerto Rican.
Can we talk about Gloria’s hair? All the running around, hiding Phil, chasing cabbies, and shooting the Mafia how was it so impeccably maintained like a shampoo commercial? Cassavetes keeps his lover and muse always in prime condition.
Gloria champions for showing the pull-and-tug of an indelible romance between a criminal and boy that ensues as sweethearts and parent-and-child running from the Mafia on the streets of New York City.
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