I’ve had a super busy month, with starting a new job and heading up North to visit my new offices, so I haven’t had a huge amount of time for watching films or writing about them. I’ve been watching a number of Man Made Monster themed films, but also managed to tick off A Woman Under the Influence which has been on my list for a long time.

Deep Dive: A Woman Under the Influence

My dad and I semi regularly get together and watch films. A lot of what we watch together are art house films, or very serious films. We’re vaguely making our way through Tarkovsky’s films for example. Makes for a fun Sunday evening.

A Woman Under the Influence is an American-Italian masterpiece directed by John Cassavetes from 1974. The film hangs on the central performance by Gena Rowlands as Mabel, a mother and wife who is suffering from an undisclosed mental illness. I think this is one of the best performances I’ve ever seen committed to the screen. The first act leads up to the decision by her husband to have her committed for 6 months, during which she undergoes electric shock therapy. The second act has her return home and the reaction of the family. Film critics love this film and for good reason. There is a lot to say and a lot that has been said about it, but here are my thoughts to add to the pile.

Mabel is blocked in by her role as a wife and mother. Early on in the film, she sends her children to stay with her mother in anticipation of a date night with her blue collar husband. Instead he has to work late and in the morning expects her to cook breakfast for him and his crew. The house is claustrophobic with heavy furniture all over the place to reflect the constraints of domesticity and her role within it. She is also boxed in by societal expectations. She acts out of the ordinary - she’s not a “normal” person. She has strange quirks, drinks too much and clearly has some kind of mental disorder. For this she is punished by her trip to a mental hospital. Nick, her husband, (played by Peter Falke who most know as Columbo) is probably the worse of the two. He is angry, unpleasant and weaponises his mother against his wife. However as a man he gets away with his behaviour, it is societally normal and manly to act in this way.

Mabel is a deeply flawed mother - something I think we still don’t get on screen often enough - who loves her children very much. The ending conversation with her children as she tucks them into bed was so heartbreaking, as is the way her mother in law speaks about her as she is being committed. Rowlands was married to the director and his mother plays her mother in law, so it’s also a deeply personal film about an Italian-American family in the ‘70s.

Other films I’ve watched this month:

Flesh for Frankenstein, 1973: Udo Kier is great in this bizarre retelling of Frankenstein. This is a film that could not be more 70s if it tried. Despite Andy Warhol’s name being plastered on the poster, I can’t see that he had anything to do with it. It has some iconic lines in it too.

Island of Lost Souls, 1932: This was a really interesting film, which I could’ve done a deep dive on instead. A man lost at sea ends up at Dr Moreau’s Island where he has been experimenting on animals to make them into humanoids. Dr Moreau runs his island like a plantation - thematically it has a lot there about slavery, fascism and colonialism.

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, 2018 (rewatch): My husband wanted to introduce our daughter. I have had an aversion to all films superhero related, since roughly the third Avengers film, but I have to say that this is pretty good and more interesting than the average Spider-Man origin story. Nick Cage as a film noir adaptation of Spider-Man is especially fun. I still prefer Sam Raimi’s first two films, but she’s a bit young for those.