Don't look at me like that or I'll have to get up.

Minnie And Moskowitz
John Cassavetes 1971 USA
Starring: Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery, Timothy Carey, Katherine Cassavetes, Lady Rowlands

Gena Rowlands really is something special, makes your heart go rat-a-tat-tat. Even in a below-par film like this she's just exceptional and the same goes for Seymour Cassel, here playing a shaggy, troublesome barfly in a role that's a million miles away from the smooth gangster he'd play in Cassavetes' The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie just fives years later. In fact until he shaves his massive moustache off late in the film it's hard to believe it's even the same actor. That both confounded my expectations is perhaps fitting because anyone who looked at the title and had the film pegged as a romantic drama will be disappointed, largely because the relationship between the two main characters really isn't a happy one or even one with a particularly happy ending. When they first meet he's parking cars and, in trying to protect her from her distraught, aggressive date, flies off the handle completely and jumps the guy before hopping into his truck with Minnie and speeding away. While this in itself may be enough to label him as a bad bet the most unusual thing about the fight is that he takes quite a beating before getting in a lucky shot then running, and later in the film it happens again when he jealously attacks an associate who has given Minnie a lift. Moreover when she, desperate to escape, walks away from him when they've stopped for a hot dog he mounts the pavement chasing her and attempts to run her down. It's strange but in the opening scenes he appears to be the sane one, faced with waitresses that ignore him and sitting opposite crazy, perspiring drifter Morgan (a frenzied cameo from Timothy Carey) by chance, but within minutes he's grabbing strangers at a bar and claiming he knows them. Maybe that's the point: that, in such a city, everybody will go mad given a little time. Loneliness is the key theme here and it's certainly what drives Minnie into pursuing a series of unsuitable men, eternally in search of "a real Charles Boyer". Her first is violent to her and, far from being her boyfriend, turns out to be married with several children. The second, who Moskowitz 'saves' her from, is a borderline psychotic who she only goes out with because she can't find an excuse (their meeting is an incredible scene where Rowlands says very little but still dominates, even the line "Let's go to lunch" makes her look as though she's about to crumble completely). The third is Moskowitz himself and the only point in his favour is that he says he loves her. It's something that his mother, played with brassy fire by Cassavetes' own mother Katherine, points out directly when the families meet. The problem with the film is that, as well-acted and intense as these scenes are, they often feel like little more than a series of vignettes and are often cut suddenly and even in the middle of sentences, as if we've interrupted the conversation and been caught and removed from the area. Similarly the script, while often brilliant, is also at turns poor, frustrating and just plain odd. It's a shame because the actors are on such cracking form that, had Cassavetes been up to his usual standard, this would have been a masterpiece.