Opening Night.In John Cassavetes’s Opening Night (1977), the actress Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) accepts an invitation from the playwright Sarah Goode (Joan Blondell) to settle a professional conflict over drinks. The newly-middle-aged Myrtle struggles so much to connect with the leading role in Sarah’s play, an older woman who lacks agency in her married life that she can’t even read all of her lines. After identifying the disconnect between her life experience and that of her character, Myrtle begins to articulate her vision of an ideal performer. “Once you’re convincing in a part, the audience accepts you as that,” Myrtle explains, loosening her confrontational tone. “Listen, Sarah, I don’t have a husband, I don’t have a family. This is it for me. I mean, I get my kicks out of acting. If I can reach a woman sitting in the audience who thinks that...
- 11/7/2022
- MUBI
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