The return of the godfather of film-making

By PETER CALDER

If John Cassavetes had not existed, the American cinema would have had to invent him, otherwise the work of directors as diverse as Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee and even Martin Scorsese could not be imagined.

In fewer than a dozen films between 1960 and 1986, Cassavetes pioneered ideas which have now become part of the cinematic mainstream - ensemble casts, hand-held camera, long takes, naturalistic dialogue - and in the process became the godfather of independent American film-making.

Now, more than a dozen years after his death, this profoundly influential film-maker is to get a well-deserved retrospective in screenings organised by the Federation of Film Societies.

Cassavetes described himself as "a professional actor and an amateur director". Like John Sayles, a latter-day leading independent, he worked in mainstream movies only so he could have money to spend on his own.

He earned an Oscar nomination in 1967 for his performance as the loudmouth Franko in The Dirty Dozen and played Mia Farrow's conniving husband who struck the Faustian bargain in Rosemary's Baby.

He also worked briefly behind the camera in Hollywood, directing Bobby Darin and Judy Garland in forgettable films, but walked away in disgust, saying "[actors] cannot be paid to care".

He was dismayed at the distortions of human emotion which were deeply ingrained in Hollywood's film-making process and committed himself to "creative interpretation which aims - without worrying about career or profit - at rendering one's own life clearer through the expression of feeling and the exercise of intelligence".

That commitment resulted in the production of films which are as strikingly idiosyncratic and challenging a generation on as they were at the time.

His modus operandi has influenced great film-makers like Mike Leigh and been adopted (and sometimes proclaimed as original) by a host of dimmer lights, but he was a lone voice in his day, a man with no artistic antecedent.

The programme for a retrospective at London's National Film Theatre a year ago took a sly sideswipe at the wildly patchy work of Lars von Trier when it noted that Cassavetes' films were " Dogma without the dogma, an organic approach which threw the rule book out the window".

Refracted through a couple of decades of hindsight, the films seem no less anarchic and spontaneous now than they were at the time, excessive or even self-indulgent only to the extent that their currency has been cheapened by the work of lesser imitators.

What is remarkable about the films is the intensity and authenticity of emotion that pours off the screen. Cassavetes worked over and over with the same actors - his wife Gena Rowlands, as well as Seymour Cassel, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara - and filmed in long takes which allowed the actors freedom to move emotionally and physically. His became the first true ensemble, creating pictures in which the achievements of actors and director are inseparable. To modern sensibilities, reared on rock videos and jump cuts, some scenes may seem interminable, but it's not hard to imagine Cassavetes chuckling from beyond the grave at the thought.

He famously recut movies after concluding that audiences were enjoying them too much and, when told that people were walking out of the 152-minute cut of Husbands, remarked that his films were "not shorthand films. I won't make shorthand films because I don't want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths."

Rowlands stars in four of the seven films in this retrospective and her work alone is worth the price of admission. As the mad, marooned Mabel in A Woman Under The Influence; as the ageing, slowly derailing actress in Opening Night (of which Almodovar's All About My Mother is a virtual rewrite); as the Oscar-nominated gun-moll who is the title character of Gloria; and in Faces, a film of marital infidelity so raw and honest that everyone assumed the dialogue was improvised (it wasn't). She's as far as might be imagined from the megastar bimbo.

She carried the standard for the depictions of gender fashioned by a man who criticised mainstream depictions of women as "either high- or low-class concubines ... There's nothing to do with the dreams of women, with the quirky part of her, the wonder of her."

Hollywood, which makes a habit of neutralising renegade talents by employing them (remember Gus Van Sant?) tried to lure Cassavetes back.

Paramount sounded him out to direct The Godfather and his name was mentioned in connection with The Exorcist. We should all be grateful they failed.

* The John Cassavetes retrospective screenings play at Sky City Theatre May 20 to 22 and at the Rialto Cinema in Newmarket May 27 and June 4. Each film screens once only. Society membership is $100 a year or $20 for three films. Further information: (09) 817 9362 or www.aucklandfilmsociety.org.nz