Synopsis
Actress Myrtle Gordon is a functioning alcoholic who is a few days from the opening night of her latest play, concerning a woman distraught about aging. One night a car kills one of Myrtle's fans who is chasing her limousine in an attempt to get the star's attention. Myrtle internalizes the accident and goes on a spiritual quest, but fails to finds the answers she is after. As opening night inches closer and closer, fragile Myrtle must find a way to make the show go on.
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Cast
- Gena RowlandsMyrtle Gordon
- John CassavetesMaurice Aarons
- Ben GazzaraManny Victor
- Joan BlondellSarah Goode
- Paul StewartDavid Samuels
- Zohra LampertDorothy Victor
- Laura JohnsonNancy Stein
- John TuellGus Simmons
- Ray PowersJimmy
- John FinneganBobby
Recommendations
- 90
The New Yorker
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. - 88
Chicago Reader
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. - 88
LarsenOnFilm
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. - 88
Slant Magazine
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. - 80
Empire
For fans of Cassavetes, Opening night is a must see. As per usual it features a superb cast. - 80
The Guardian
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. - 80
Time Out
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. - 75
Chicago Sun-Times
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.
