Peter Falk explains the brilliance of John Cassavetes to Gena Rowlands
In many ways, John Cassavetes helped to pioneer the movement of independent cinema in America. He was a genuinely talented actor, and he used his income from that line of work to fund his passion as a director. In Cassavetes’ fifth film, Husbands, he cast Peter Falk in one of the lead roles.
Remembering the genius of Cassavetes in conversation with his wife Gena Rowlands, Falk said: “When people think about John, they think that he’s an original, and he introduced a new standard in acting that the world had never seen before. Not only in this country but all those French guys, those New Wave guys, they were all smitten with John. They all took it from him.”
High praise indeed to claim that several directors from across the globe were taking note of Cassavetes’ style. Falk continued: “He could really take a piece of film and play, and twist it, and turn it, and make it. He loved doing that. John’s approach to making a movie, John’s approach to filming, and John’s approach to acting was all so new; it was all so original. It was all so unfamiliar.”
Falk’s first experience was in 1970’s Husbands, a comedy-drama about three married and successful men living in New York. However, they experience something of a mid-life crisis when their close friend dies. Falk had been unaware of Cassavetes’ directing style and found it somewhat irritating, to begin with.
“I was fighting it, you know,” Falk said. “I wanted to do what I was used to doing because, during Husbands, I could have killed him. I wanted to kill him. I didn’t understand what in the hell I was doing. I started out I tried to be polite, so I said to him, ‘John, I’d like to say this. I’d like to work with you again as an actor, but as a director, never. Do you hear what I’m saying?’”
However, come the end of the production of the film, Falk had a change of heart. “By the time we got done with Husbands, I had second thoughts,” he admitted, “And I went to John, ‘I want to play that part.’ He said, ‘You do? Why do you want to play it?’ I said, ‘John, I gotta go with you again because I might have been wrong the first time, because the first time, I didn’t understand a word you said, and I want to try it again.’”
That part came a few years later in one of Cassavetes’ best-ever efforts, 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence. That time Falk starred alongside Rowlands playing her irritated and abusive husband, while Rowlands herself played a highly stressed woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
