A woman on the verge of a complete breakdown takes the stage every night, and battles her personal demons, channelling her trauma into her performance, hoping that somehow she will be able to convey some iota of truth. John Cassavetes certainly knew how to construct a compelling story from the most simple of premises, as evident by Opening Night. With this film, the director reached an entirely new level of narrative storytelling – no longer did cinema have to be driven by a coherent, lucid story, but rather a series of poetic moments working towards a beautiful but heartwrenching social drama. Rather, Cassavetes takes the opportunity to construct an intricate character study, an intimate portrait of a woman teetering dangerously the edge of sanity, carefully walking the narrow tightrope of stability in the hopes of finding some element of truth in her professional life in spite of the haunting nature of her personal quandaries. In all honesty, Opening Night is one of the most extraordinary achievements of the 1970s, a cold and clinical film about one woman and her rapid mental deterioration, made by a director who put emphasis not merely on the story, but on the people interpreting that story. Cassavetes made his career with this psychodramas about fractured individuals (often imbuing them with some elements of reality), with this film representing one of his several roaring successes, a challenging but brilliant work that never falters in its earnest dedication to pursuing the truth through the eyes of an ordinary woman in a deeply precarious position.

Gena Rowlands can act like nearly no one else in her generation – her raw intensity, her chilling focus and her extraordinary ability to play anyone from an ordinary suburban to a high society actress without any difficult. Opening Night is one of several collaborations between her and her husband Cassavetes, with this film being the midpoint in what is often considered one of the greatest trinities of director/performer collaborations, occurring after Woman Under the Influence but before Gloria, which are not only Cassavetes at his best as a director, but also Rowlands at her peak as an actress. It has been a while since I’ve visited the others, but Opening Night stands as the very best of their collaborations, especially because it contains the actress at the top of her game, finding the balance between the character and the themes she represents. Playing Myrtle Gordon, an esteemed and beloved actress who has momentarily put a hold on her film career (for reasons not known – could she be experiencing the same age-related decline in the roles she is offered there?) to appear in a play, where she is meant to play a woman supposedly much older than herself. Myrtle struggles to connect with the woman she is playing – how is she supposed to capture the essence of her inner conflicts if she herself has nothing to relate them too? Her only salvation in this regard comes on behalf of the tragic passing of an obsessive fan, who is killed when she tries to catch the attention of the woman she truly idolizes. Now haunted by the mental spirit of this teenaged girl, Myrtle uses this traumatic incident to inform her performance – because, in her mind, any form of suffering and trauma is good enough.

I simply can’t fathom how good Rowlands is in Opening Night – what she does here is nothing short of miraculous. The film is structured almost entirely around her, and essentially serves to be a complex character study of an actress facing certain problems, and following her as she tries to overcome them somehow. This is, without any sense of hyperbole, one of the most extraordinary pieces of acting I’ve seen, with Rowlands being able to effortlessly play the character in all her different mental and emotional incarnations – she chews the scenery with reckless abandon when its required of her, playing to the rafters with the dynamic might of a truly talented diva – and immediately following that with moments of sincere, authentic subtletly as we see her inner turmoil take over and fashion her into a bundle of neuroses and post-traumatic stress disorder, a woman barely holding onto her sanity as it is, slowly losing control of not only her own creative process but herself overall. It is almost impossible to describe the absolute force underlying this performance – sometimes the most resonant moments of this performance occur when the actress is saying nothing at all, and allowing her brooding expressivity to tell the story. Rowlands is given a character, and extracts every bit of potential from it, getting to the character’s mind in a way that would be unsettling had we not seen the actress give similarly spirited performances in the past. I have always admired Rowlands for her endless pursuit of authenticity, regardless of the role – you’ll rarely find an actress so dedicated to playing her characters with such an earnest truthfulness, and all of her finest qualities are put on display in Opening Night. Her performance incites a visceral reaction, a form of mental and emotional stimulation derived from her unquestionably profound ability to give an electrifying performance that burrows itself deeply within the psyche of the viewer, never daring to depart. It is such beautiful work from Rowlands, and it’s just a performance that’s going to stay with me for a long time.

While being built around Rowlands’ astonishing performance, we can’t neglect the supporting cast of Opening Night, many of which turn in incredible performances in their own right. Hollywood legend Joan Blondell is given the fascinating role as the playwright of the production at the core of the film, a woman who has only recently learned to accept her age and embrace the process of getting older, with the play representing some of her own insecurities and anxieties that came with maturing. The role is a tricky one because she (along with Nancy, the girl who is killed) represents a side of Myrtle – while Nancy is a reflection of the protagonist as a young woman, Sarah is her future self – old, alone and bitter. Blondell conveys the vitriol at the centre of the character with almost vicious sincerity, and even in her moments of more genuine kindness, there is still an overt sensation of sinister malice between the two women. Ben Gazzara plays Manny, the sleazy director who considers Myrtle to be both his biggest asset and worst liability – her talents make her a draw for audiences, but her self-destructive attitude threatens to tear his play apart, and unlike Myrtle, Manny readily admits that this play is his last chance at success, and if it fails, his career will essentially be tarnished. He has a lot invested in this play, financially and emotionally, and Myrtle’s instability is about to cost him even more. Surprisingly, the best supporting performance in this film comes from Cassavetes himself – playing Maurice, the co-lead in the play who has to struggle with the awkward transition from being Myrtle’s ex-lover to her scene partner night after night. Cassavetes is not only an accomplished director, but also an exceptional actor, and as Opening Night shows, he is capable of some extraordinary restraint in his own performances. It is astounding work from him, with his spirited portrayal of a man only barely holding it together himself is gripping, and it isn’t surprising to discover that of everyone in the cast, he has the best chemistry with Rowlands (for obvious reasons), and some of the best moments in the film occur when two of them are on screen together. The ensemble of Opening Night is exceptional, and while Rowlands commands the screen like no one I have ever seen before, the rest of the cast really holds their own in terrific fashion.

Trauma is a tricky subject to represent properly in any artistic work, especially in film, whereby even the smallest tonal inconsistency or ill-chosen term could result in either inappropriate callousness or grotesque, saccharine sentimentality. Opening Night focuses on a plethora of concepts, one of them being the effects of trauma, and it certainly does execute the broad tenets of this concept well enough, finding the perfect balance between the sentimental and the authentic, using it to further the psychological investigation of the protagonist. The main element of trauma Cassavetes seems to derive from is the concept of the present-absent – the individual who has disappeared from view (normally due to death, as is the case here) – and how this figure remains with the main character, often without permission, wreaking psychological havoc. In this film, the young girl who is killed begins to haunt the protagonist, manifesting as a form of a mental ghost (this is by no means a ghost story – even Rowlands’ character herself reiterates that she is a mental construct, but one she simply can’t let go of). However, real or not, it represents the trauma of losing someone, and whether it is a beloved family member or an individual who was in your life for only a fleeting moment, there are some losses that leave an indelible imprint, and without the proper methods (the bilateral concept of “acting out” and “working through”, the main methods psychologists have found to describe reactions to traumatic events), they can become akin to supernatural occurrences, following an individual in every facet of their life, and perhaps even causing their internal destruction. A traumatic past can linger on like a sinister spectre, following us like a shadow that perpetually reminds us not only of the loss but also the circumstances surrounding that loss, which is often even more disturbing than the death itself. Had the fan died in any other way, would Myrtle still have the same constant hallucinations?

Of course, Myrtle is not someone who would turn down the opportunity for inspiration. The death does leave her shaken but also allows her the chance to reach into the recesses of human suffering and extract information on how to be an ordinary person, rather than a vain actress – in many ways, Nancy’s death is somewhat of a godsend to the fading star. Myrtle Gordon is a complex individual – she is far from being unlikeable, and if often extremely compelling to the point where she is a bit too relatable to the viewer – yet she is also someone who relishes her position as a performer, and by the very virtue of the name of her profession, she is expected to perform, which she has increasing difficulty in actually doing – that is until the tragic demise of a fan leaves her at a crossroads. As a human being with some iota of compassion, she does feel empathy towards the girl and her family, even sitting shiva with the girl’s mourning families. As an actress, however, she takes this opportunity to inform her role. She struggles to understand something as simple as pain and loss, but with this event, which is almost serendipitous, she gains a wealth of inspiration. The problem comes when her search for professional inspiration begins to encroach on her personal life, taking a worrying toll on her psychological state and sending her into a downward spiral of mental instability. Cassavetes was always a filmmaker who took broad and resonant themes and infused them into his film, albeit in ways that are far from heavy-handed. Here, the concept of the artistic process, whereby certain artists take the opportunity to turn loss into profit by allowing it to inform their work. Opening Night dares to challenge us by asking whether such an action is justifiable in the name of art, or if is are nothing but petty exploitation of the pain and loss of others for artistic gain.

The final concept explored quite deeply throughout Opening Night, and perhaps most significantly so, because it is inherently related to the previous two themes, is that of decline. There are various kinds of deterioration present throughout the film, with Cassavetes exploring the often unexpected intersections between them. The most obvious in light of what was just discussed is that of mental decline. Myrtle is slowly losing her mind, obsessing about the death of a young lady and the harrowing aftermath of witnessing such a tragic incident. She is deeply scarred, the image of seeing one of her adoring fans dying right before her eyes cauterizes her and leaves her even more damaged than she was before. It is clear that our protagonist was not stable even before the incident, as evident by the second kind of decline explored here, that of ageing. Age plays a pivotal role in Opening Night – Myrtle hides a fact as innocuous as her age, refusing to tell anyone, in the event that she may be forced to play an archetype for the rest of her career – it is scathing commentary on the entertainment industry, which seems to have a binary view of female performers – they can either be gorgeous ingenues or lovable biddies, and after the death of the young Nancy, Myrtle finds herself projecting her own insecurities about ageing onto the mental spectre of the young woman, who represents the main character in her younger days, when she wasn’t only desirable, but also in demand by producers. She is slowly approaching the age where she is no longer given roles such as these – and considering this role requires her to play someone supposedly much older deals a considerable blow to her vain self-image, which she hopes to preserve somehow, resorting to extreme measures, such as acting out in order to get attention, which is reflected in her growing mental instability. Myrtle is a character decaying mentally before us, her collapse being dangerously imminent, which is precisely where the genuine impact of this film comes in, because we never know when the moment she finally succumbs to mental and emotional decomposition will finally happen, but it certainly is lurking not far behind Myrtle on her chaotic journey towards self-destruction.

Opening Night is a film that stays with the viewer. Whether it be Cassavetes’ masterful ability to tell a story through the most simple means, constructing gorgeous psychological odysseys, or Gena Rowlands’ exceptional ability to interpret the main character with a blend of cold-hearted ferocity and empathetic compassion, or the general social commentary underlying this film. This is is often extremely harrowing, and finds its biggest successes in the moments of tragedy and conflict – but also using humour sporadically, not to lighten the tone, but rather to buttress the story and portray these individuals, not as singular figures, but as nuanced, complex individual playing characters. It is an astounding work, a beautiful piece of socially-charged drama that shows nearly everyone at the very peak of their craft, and a film that may be difficult to watch, but ultimately a rewarding experience, because it challenges the viewer just as much as the events depicted test the protagonist and her insecurities. The film provokes several concepts and asks many questions without ever resolving them – and it all works towards a deeply compelling, endlessly captivating and truly unsettling drama about a woman truly trying her best to hold it together when the forces of her tragedy and work collide and threaten to derail not only her career, but everything in her life, leaving her with nothing more than her own psychological fragility.