Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

lasttimeisaw Myrtle Gordon (Rowlands) is a theatre actress, who is headlining a play named "The Second Woman", directed by Manny Victor (Gazzara), written by Sarah Goode (Blondell) and co- stars Maurice Aarons (Cassavetes) and Gus Simmons (Tuell). Myrtle is not a nice woman, middle-aged, unmarried, and quite a big name in her line of work in light of the crazed groupies waiting for an autograph at the theatre, she is self-absorbing and emotionally unstable, especially when a young fan Nancy (Johnson) died in a horrific road accident after expressing her frenzied admiration. Myrtle's world begins to unravel, to a point where it seems to inevitably endanger the entire project on the opening night when Myrtle arrives seriously late and is beastly drunken. Again, Myrtle is not a likable woman, anyone can condemn her being morally irresponsible, almost, yes, almost singlehandedly sabotages the play which is a labour of love of many many people, yet still, everyone has to treat her as a queen and patronise her every need, even in the last minute, there is no plan B, Myrtle has to be on stage, and act out regardlessly. But, Myrtle is such a real woman, we might not like her, but we understand her, we can relate her feelings, all her fear and confusion, thanks to Rowlands second-to- none competence, another towering achievement after her Oscar-nominated turn in A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974), both under the aegis of her hubby Cassavetes, however, this time, she has been scandalously overlooked by Oscar voters (a Silver Berlin bear can do her some justice), Myrtle is a polarised opposite of the working-class housewife Mabel in AWUTI, even conforms to the stereotype of an over-the-hill celebrity, doted on by producers and directors, hoity-toity and capricious, dreads the loss of her youth and refuse to face squarely with her age. Rowlands indulges ravishingly in such a rich showcase with authenticity and empathy. The Second Woman is about a woman who faces the music and lets go of her youth self, so as to embraces the next chapter of her life anew, which is exactly why Myrtle dithers, she is so afraid if her performance is good, she will be typecast as an older woman, which in the ageism showbiz, means the death knell of her illustrious career. And as her career is the only thing she can cling onto, to feel respected and loved, subconsciously she wants the play to bomb, thus she imagines the dead Nancy as a haunting figure, her vaporising youth, as the shackles to her commitment. On many levels, OPENING NIGHT is the female counterpart of BIRDMAN (2014), thematically particularly, whereas BIRDMAN is invitingly engaging in its cinematographic gimmick, Cassavetes pierces his scalpel more astutely into the anatomy of Myrtle's deterioration and those who are around her and in desperate state to pull herself together with persistent close-ups and intimate soft focus. Moreover, when the play is on, Cassavetes firmly places his camera among the audience for theatre simulation, which comes to a climax in the final act (both in the film and in the play), viewers cannot tell whether Myrtle and Maurice are improvising or acting according to the script, but utterly captivated by the spontaneous involvement of their quick-witted wordplay and top-notch dramaturgy. By the way, Cassavetes corroborates that he is a brilliant actor too, what a matchless triple-threat! I should also namedrop Gazzara and Blondell for their fine performances, although both pre-determinedly overshadowed by Rowland's excellence, their reactions stand for the perspectives from a more objective angle, no matter how frustrating they are sometimes. To say the least, if you are stunned by BIRDMAN, Cassavetes' decades-earlier OPENING NIGHT can genuinely blow your mind!

MisterWhiplash Watching John Cassavetes film, Opening Night, I was reminded of something that Quentin Tarantino said once in an interview about personal experience in being a creator of art or acting. He referred to an example of, say, if he ran over a dog while on his way to act in a play that it wouldn't be the end of his life but that it would affect him, and that, without a doubt, he would have to bring that experience with him on stage even if it was a light comedy. "Otherwise," as he said, "what am I doing?" I couldn't help but think of his words when watching Gena Rowland's character, Myrtle Gordon, who for almost a whole week or so goes through a very similar scenario. There is more to this in Cassavetes' film, of course, since it's about how the theater works around a star actress, what emotion and human nature mean when looking at playing a character, and how one lives when all one has (like Myrtle Gordon) is the theater.Near the beginning of the film, after exiting a performance, Myrtle is signing autographs and one such fan named Nancy comes up to her favorite star and pours her heart out to Myrtle. It's a touching little moment, but it doesn't last as she has to get in the car (pouring rain and all). She then watches in horror as the girl, who stood right next to the car as it drove off, gets hit by another car in an auto accident. She's not sure really what happened, but then finds out the next day that in fact the girl did die from the hit. From then on she's sort of stunned by this even after she thinks it's out of her system. At first this shows in small ways, like when she rehearses a scene with her fellow actor (played by Cassavetes) and can't seem to stand being hit - she blames it on the lack of depth in the character (the writer: "What do you think the play lacks?" "Hope," says Myrtle)- but then Nancy starts to show up to her, an apparition that to Myrtle is all to real, until she's suddenly gone.Cassavetes, as in the past films, is after a search for what it means to have emotion, to really feel about something and feel it, or the lack thereof, and how it affects others around the person. This isn't exactly new ground for Rowlands, who previously played a woman on the edge of herself in Woman Under the Influence (in that case because of alcohol), nor would it be alien territory for costar Ben Gazzara, who just came off starring in Killing of a Chinese Bookie. But the actors express everything essential to their characters in every scene; Cassavetes doesn't tell them how to get from A to B in a scene, and he doesn't need to. There's a mood in a Cassavetes film that trumps the sometimes grungy camera-work. You know Myrtle, for example, should be content somehow, even if it isn't with the plot. But she's haunted, and is unsatisfied with her character's lack of depth and the tone of the play ("Aging, who goes to see that?" she asks the playwright), and it starts to affect those around her too.The question soon becomes though not what is the usual. A conventional dramatist would make the conflict 'Will she be able to go on stage, will the show go on?' This isn't important for Cassavetes, even if it's there, as is the question 'Will she be alright?' Perhaps going through such a grueling play as "The Second Woman" could help her work out her personal demons and her losing her grip on reality (seeing Sara and attacking her in front of total strangers, who wonder what the hell is going on)? Or will the play's lack of hope strain everything else wrong with her? The depths Rowlands makes with her character are intense and harrowing, and that it's expected doesn't mean it's any duller than Woman Under the Influence- if anything, it's just as good as that film at being honest about a person in this profession, and consequently the other performances are just as true, from Gazarra to Nancy played by a subtle Laura Johnson. Cassavetes answers to his own posed questions aren't easy.One of the real thrills of Opening Night, along with seeing great actors performing an amazing script, is to see Cassavetes take on the theater the way he does. We see the play performed- and it's apparently a real play- and we only know slightly what it's about. When we see the actors on the stage performing it, we wax and wane between being involved in what melodrama is going on (relationship scuffling and affairs and the occasional slap and domestic violence) and the improvisation of the actors. I wondered watching how much really was improvised, how much Cassavetes allowed for the other actors to do in the scenes where Myrtle starts to go loopy or, in the climax, is completely smashed. He's on the stage, too, so it must have been something for them to work it out beforehand and let what would happen happen.It's funny, startling, chilling, and edge-of-your-seat stuff, some of the best theater-on-film scenes ever put in a movie, and we see the lines between actor on stage, actor on film, actor with actor, blur together wonderfully. Opening Night is a potent drama that is full of frank talk about death and madness, reality and fiction, where the love is between people, and really, finally, what does 'acting' mean?

lrpmr I spent 5 hours drenched in this film. Nothing I have ever seen comes close to the delicious funk this film left me in. Never mind females advanced aging dilemma's, human fear vaults off the screen for your viewing. Personally engaging to the ninth degree, the film invests one with an undeniable shared feeling for our lives'. I enjoyed this dalliance with raw wounded gall deep from within. It empowers a mutually shared vestment in the history of human encounters reaching far deeper into the pain, isolation and skewed views of self and others. The result forgives our tepid forming of a bridge away from the muddy sludge of dead we must encounter. The birth in finding real people is a happy pursuit. The effort for realism intersects with the dark ground of our bankrupt culture.

Pokerface11 Opening Night is my favorite Cassavetes, and I feel it is my duty to debunk the notion that those or any of his films aside from Shadows was strictly improvised. In fact, his films were tightly scripted after actor improvisation was used to contribute to his ideas. The coherence of a film like Opening Night, the development of the themes of aging, vanity, and hope, could not just spring from the improvisational head of even the very fine actors in the movie. If you pay attention to the dialogue (outside of the lines in the play), it is obvious that much care was taken to craft them (e.g., the scene where Myrtle explains to the playwright what problems she is having with the character and script).