Michael Imperioli discusses his favourite John Cassavetes movies
Actor Michael Imperioli will likely be eternally known for playing Christopher Moltisanti in the widely-beloved American crime drama series The Sopranos, but he’s also added another string to his bow in recent years after playing a sex-addicted father in Mike White’s The White Lotus.
Before The Sopranos, Imperioli had already dipped his toes into the bath of fame and fortune that would quickly come his way. He had a supporting role in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and portrayed unique characters in the likes of Jungle Fever, Bad Boys and The Basketball Diaries before establishing himself as a familiar face on our TV screens.
Given the rich array of creatives he has worked alongside throughout his career, Imperioli has never been afraid of discussing the directors and fellow actors that have inspired his own artist viewpoint, but it comes to Imperioli’s favourite filmmaker of all time, nobody comes close to the legendary John Cassavetes. Imperioli has gone on record several times over the years to express his admiration for one of the widely considered greatest independent filmmakers of all time.
During a feature with Criterion, the actor picked three Cassavetes movies for inclusion in his top ten. The first is A Woman Under the Influence, in which Gena Rowlands plays a housewife on the verge of a serious mental breakdown, a movie that Imperioli considers his “favourite movie” next to The Wizard of Oz.
“The most honest on-screen depiction of mental illness ever,” he said. “Cassavetes perfectly nails the heartbreak and frustration that eclipses a family when a loved one’s sanity slips away. It’s at times both gut-wrenching and oddly hilarious, and Cassavetes manages to make gorgeous cinema with colors and composition.”
He added: “The impeccable, monumental performances of Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, the supporting cast is flawless. In any other film, the character would be played as a cad the audience would be rooting against. Not so in a Cassavetes film, where the roles of hero and villain shift moment to moment.”
Another Cassavetes movie that Imperioli loves is Opening Night, in which Rowlands once again shows her prowess for playing a woman in the throes of psychotic turmoil, this time as a stage actress who experiences visions of a recently deceased fan whose death she witnessed.
“Ample proof of my theory that Gena Rowlands is the greatest American actor or actress ever,” Imperioli said of the 1977 effort “Period. No prosthetics, no extreme weight gain or loss, no accents or limps, and yet has any other actor ever created two more distinct, honest, or complete human beings on-screen?”
Of Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Imperioli noted, “This time he takes on the gangster/noir genre but does it in his own inimitable abstract-expressionist style, where time slows down or sometimes speeds up, so we never know exactly where we are in terms of a traditional story arc or act structures. We are in dreamland, an opium-induced reverie.”
The 1976 neo-noir crime film stars Ben Gazzara, who’d previously worked with Cassavetes on Husbands and Opening Night, alongside Timothy Carey, Seymour Cassel and Morgan Woodward. Gazzara plays a strip club owner and becomes embroiled in a run-in with dangerous loan sharks in Los Angeles.
Check out the trailer for The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night below.
