Opening Night

Cassavetes’s most cleverly constructed film is also a definitive lesson in the death-defying, all-consuming art of acting, proof of a madness beyond the Method. Read full review

Juggling onstage and offstage action, Cassavetes makes this a fascinating look at some of the internal mechanisms and conflicts that create theatrical fiction, and his wonderful cast never lets him down. Read full review

Rowlands takes the movie by the throat in the dramatic, onstage sequences, just as Brando would have done, yet she’s equally compelling in the film’s smaller moments. Read full review

Opening Night hits closest to home in its long, haunting, tension-fueled riffs between Cassavetes and Rowlands, playing lovers on stage and former lovers off stage. Read full review

For fans of Cassavetes, Opening night is a must see. As per usual it features a superb cast. Read full review

Woody Allen said that he could watch a Bergman movie and feel himself gripped as if by a thriller; that's how I felt watching this restored version of John Cassavetes's 1977 picture Opening Night. Read full review

At once a lament to the ravages of age and an examination of those tiny foibles which separate reality from dramatic artifice, it’s a baffling and intricate film which, although light on conventional pleasures, still manages to provoke and beguile. Read full review

Gena Rowlands gives one of her bravest, most startling performances here, waging guerilla combat with the demands of a play she can’t abide, wrestling with demons so real they kick her in the teeth. Read full review

Gena Rowlands plays the role at perfect pitch: She is able to suggest, even in the midst of seemingly ordinary moments, the controlled panic of a person who needs a drink, right here, right now. Read full review

Opening Night is a reminder of what has made Mr. Cassavetes's films so appealing, and of what can make them so maddening, too. For all its length -- nearly two and three-quarter hours -- it's a relatively thin example of the director's work, but a mischievous and inviting one, too. Read full review

Gena Rowlands turns in another virtuoso performance as the troubled actress. Cassavetes’ highly personal work will please his coterie of enthusiasts, but for general audiences it will be viewed as shrill, puzzling, depressing and overlong. Read full review

Another of Cassavetes' puzzling, personal, neurotic, and often brilliant productions that would have benefited from editing with a scythe. Read full review

Cassavetes' latest film, Opening Night, tries to deal with aging, a problem of genuine importance to an increasing proportion of the population but the movie ends up floundering and finally sinking beneath its own weight. [23 Dec 1977]

It could be the basis of a genuinely interesting drama, for stage or screen, about conjugal relations in the theater. Obviously. John Cassavetes is the last person in the world likely to perceive or write that drama. [15 Apr 1978, p.C9]

There is no attempt to explain why an actress would go to pieces when she discovers a point of identity with her role; nor why an actress who is constantly loony, drunk, abusive or all three would not be understudied, let alone replaced. It should be noted that the play-within-the-movie is even worse than the movie-about-the-play. [14 Apr 1978, p.18]