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Opening Night (1977)

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Top Critics

Average Rating: 7.8/10
Reviews Counted: 21
Fresh: 20 | Rotten: 1

Opening Night is as dense and difficult as one would expect from John Cassavetes, but even the director's detractors will be unable to deny the power of Gena Rowlands' performance.

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Average Rating: N/A
Critic Reviews: 3
Fresh: 3 | Rotten: 0

Opening Night is as dense and difficult as one would expect from John Cassavetes, but even the director's detractors will be unable to deny the power of Gena Rowlands' performance.

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Movie Info

John Cassavetes' Opening Night stars Gena Rowlands (Mrs. Cassavetes) as end-of-tether Broadway actress Myrtle Gordon. She is about to open in a play written by her old friend Sarah Goode (Joan Blondell), but a series of pre-show setbacks and disasters threaten to destroy not only the production but Myrtle's sanity. The actress is especially rattled when one of her staunchest fans dies in an accident. In the face of bleak reality, just how important is the old "show must go on" ethic? Supporting

PG-13, 2 hr. 24 min.

Drama

Directed By: John Cassavetes

Written By: John Cassavetes

In Theaters: Dec 22, 1977 Limited

On DVD: Jun 29, 1998

Faces Distributing Corporation

Cast

Gena Rowlands
Myrtle Gordon
Ben Gazzara
Manny Victor
John Cassavetes
Maurice Aarons
Joan Blondell
Sarah Goode
Paul Stewart
David Samuels
Zohra Lampert
Dorothy Victor
Laura Johnson
Nancy Stein
John Tuell
Gus Simmons
Ray Powers
Jimmy
John Finnegan
Prop Man
Louise Fitch
Kelly
Frederick Draper
Leo
Katherine Cassavetes
Vivian
Lady Rowlands
Melva Drake
Sherry Bain
Bartender
Jimmy Christie
Shirley
Peter Falk
Angelo Grisanti
Charlie Spikes
James Karen
Newsstand Operator
Eleanor Zee
Sylvia Stein
Peter Bogdanovich
Meade Roberts
Eddie Stein
Fred Draper
Seymour Cassel

Critic Reviews for Opening Night

All Critics (23) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (21) | Rotten (1) | DVD (3)

Gena Rowlands turns in another virtuoso performance as the troubled actress. Cassavetes' highly personal work will please his coterie of enthusiasts, but for general audiences it will be viewed as shrill, puzzling, depressing and overlong.

July 28, 2008 Full Review Source: Variety

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Variety Staff

Variety

Top Critic

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John Cassavetes was unique in his visions and his films.

July 28, 2008 Comment

Jeff Menell

Hollywood Reporter

Top Critic

Juggling onstage and offstage action, Cassavetes makes this a fascinating look at some of the internal mechanisms and conflicts that create theatrical fiction.

July 28, 2008 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader

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Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

The scenes in which Myrtle consults first one and then another spiritualist are typical of Cassavetes's genius in filming madness.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times

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Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

Top Critic

Intriguing but enigmatic backstage theater melodrama with shades of All About Eve.

September 11, 2008 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews

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Dennis Schwartz

Ozus' World Movie Reviews

The unpredictability of Rowlands' character brings one surprise after another to the narrative as the other characters scramble to accommodate or cajole her, and the surprises are often as funny as they are intensely dramatic.

August 11, 2008 Comment

Douglas Pratt

DVDLaser

As per usual it features a superb cast, including the ever-present Gena Rowlands, who successfully improvise their way the film.

July 28, 2008 Full Review Source: Empire Magazine

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Kim Newman

Empire Magazine

As densely layered and difficult as anything else Cassavetes ever directed, as dense as any American film from the 1970s.

June 23, 2008 Full Review Source: Antagony & Ecstasy

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Tim Brayton

Antagony & Ecstasy

the film is almost suffocatingly long, even though its ideas about actors, acting and real life are among Cassavetes's most intriguing.

June 15, 2007 Full Review Source: This is London

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Derek Malcolm

This is London

As you might expect, coming from indie godfather John Cassavetes, 1977's Opening Night is something else, a weird, raw, ragged portrait of an actress on the verge of a

June 15, 2007 Full Review Source: Total Film

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Total Film

The film of the week is 30 years old and hasn't aged a day. It's John Cassavetes's Opening Night, a truly mesmerising study of anxiety and identity crisis in theatreland.

June 15, 2007 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph

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Tim Robey

Daily Telegraph

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

June 15, 2007 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK]

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Peter Bradshaw

Guardian [UK]

The camerawork is instinctively fluid, the performances savage - this is one of the best films about theatre ever made.

June 15, 2007 Full Review Source: Times [UK]

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Times [UK]

Opening Night is a truly grand unveiling of our innermost fears.

June 15, 2007 Full Review Source: BBC

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Stella Papamichael

BBC

Another of Cassavetes' puzzling, personal, neurotic, and often brilliant productions that would have benefited from editing with a scythe.

August 30, 2006 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide

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TV Guide's Movie Guide

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.

January 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out

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David Jenkins

Time Out

Rowlands sings a different kind of mad song in Opening Night, playing a diva-like actress preparing a part about aging that haunts her, at times literally, with a vision of lost youth.

February 14, 2005 Full Review Source: AV Club

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Keith Phipps

AV Club

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Audience Reviews for Opening Night

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Cassavetes is probably the coolest filmmaker of all time. His films are like having a whiskey and a cigar in some quiet little jazz club somewhere. This cast is to die for, Rowlands, Gazzara, Blondell and Cassavetes are brilliant. The improvisation isn't always on the ball and although I enjoyed the 'blink and you'll

October 2, 2009

Anthony Lawrie

Super Reviewer

Cassavetes gritty feeling blends well with backstage drama. Gena Rowlands is great wonderfully backed by Joan Blondell in one of her best latter day performances.

April 22, 2008