A Woman Under the Influence (1974) on Netflix
Mabel Longhetti looks after three children while her husband Nick heads a city works crew. Her strange behavior unsettles people outside the family, and Nick tries to look after her.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb8.0/1034,117 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Nick Longhetti heads a city works crew in Los Angeles, and his wife Mabel stays home with their three children. People outside the family find her strange, and Nick tries to protect her. One evening the children sleep at their grandmother's so the couple can have a night out, but Nick is called away to repair a water main break. Left alone, Mabel drinks and then goes to a bar, where she is very friendly toward a stranger, Garson Cross, who drives her home. In the morning Nick brings his crew back for breakfast and Mabel makes spaghetti; the meal turns tense and the men leave quickly. A play date with Harold Jensen's children goes badly, and when Nick arrives with his mother, Margaret, the children are running wild.
Cast
- Matthew Casselas Tony Longhetti
- Christina Grisantias Maria Longhetti
- Eddie Shawas Dr. Zepp
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Despite having no funds for film stock, production went ahead after 10,000 feet (about two hours) of film mysteriously appeared the night before shooting; one legend claims it was stolen from a pornographic movie house.
- Told "No one wants to see a crazy, middle-aged dame" when he tried to raise money, Cassavetes mortgaged his house and borrowed from family and friends; Peter Falk liked the screenplay so much he turned down a role in The Day of the Dolphin and invested $500,000.
- Rowlands' depiction of a mental breakdown was once so convincing that Cassavetes stopped the take and rushed to see if she was okay.
- A few weeks into the shoot, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel was fired after clashes with Cassavetes; many of the original crew left with him, and he was replaced by Mike Ferris, who had never shot a feature film.
- Unable to find a distributor, Cassavetes personally phoned theater owners and got the film into art houses and on college campuses; distributor Jeff Lipsky called it the first time in motion picture history that an independent film was distributed without a nationwide system of sub-distributors.
- Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence because his wife Gena Rowlands wanted to act in a play about the difficulties of contemporary women; the script was so intense she knew she could not perform it eight times a week, so he turned it into a film.
- Cassavetes hired Bo Harwood, then an unemployed rock musician who had never made a soundtrack, played piano or done sound recording, to write the film's music, play piano and later record its audio.
- In 1990 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", one of the first fifty films to be listed.
