Around half its time, this movie is as pleasant and entertaining as watching an unedited tape from a psychiatric ward. Gena Rowlands does deliver a very good performance and Peter Falk also does a good job. But what about the rest that constitutes as a movie?Yelling, yelling, yelling. And some more yelling plus slapping in the face. Little to no action. For 15 minutes we are forced to watch actors eating a meal. That's right, that is what that scene near the beginning is all about: the cast is just eating, cameras rolling, script not existing. It is just an improvisation with a little editing done afterwards, with totally boring end effect. And something similar is repeated at the end: they are just cleaning the table for four minutes. How fascinating and mind openingThere is almost no musical score; which is always a risky move, because it makes the movie more realistic but at the cost of being less appealing to the audience. So on the one hand, we have a "realism of no music". But on the other, we have a scene with a rope at the dig site: one of the characters (while being angry) manipulates (probably without bad intentions) the rope, while other character uses it at the same time to go down a slippery hill; and falls down. At there are two problem with this event. The first one: there would be no way to manipulate the rope with such ease (especially with one hand), because of the weight of that (fallen) character. The second one: the issue of perpetrating the accident is later on never addressed by authorities or even the rest of the work crew. So that is quite unrealistic roll of events. And so, a mixture like that just makes you think of the whole movie as a chaotic endeavor; a movie with modus operandi of "My name is John Famous-Actor-Slash-Independent-Director Cassavetes and I am taking a serious subject of mental illness, but I do not care about the rest, because I have already used up seriousness on being an self funded independent director". And on the technical side of this picture there are problems with bad lighting and bigger problems with even worst soundThis movie is so boring and hard to digest, that unless you are a film (or medicine) student, you should not approach it

Nick Longhetti (Peter Falk) is an angry hard working blue collar worker. His wife Mabel (Gena Rowlands) has some mental issues. She's stressed out and manic. She gets into drunken one night stands. He flies into rages over her craziness. He loves her and never physically harms her. She's sent to a mental institution for 6 months. He throws a large party for her return but his mother berates him for inviting so many people. Even with only the family, she is overwhelmed by the experience.This is a showcase for Gena Rowlands' acting abilities. She is worthy of her accolades. Her performance is completely immersive. Peter Falk yells a lot and matches her intensity. This is a movie for the acting classes.

The late John Cassavetes and his wife, Gena Rowlands were able to carve an impressive niche into cinema history while Cassavetes was still alive, but the zenith of their work together had to be the 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence an explosive and blistering look at mental illness from a perspective that has been rarely explored on screen.Most films dealing with characters with mental issues take place after the diagnosis has been made and the character is either in therapy or has been committed. This film takes a different tack as we meet Mabel, a suburban housewife and mother of 3 played by Rowlands, whose mental issues initially appear to be something as simple as bipolar personality, something that can be dealt with via medication, but it is clear as we see Mabel interact in various social situations, that there are serious mental issues going on here, but for some reason, no one really wants to talk about it. Her husband Nick (Peter Falk) knows there is something wrong, but is still harboring a great deal of denial about it, despite the fact that he absolutely blows up at anyone else even hinting at the fact that there is something wrong with Mabel. There are moments where we see Nick punishing Mabel for behavior she doesn't know how to control for the sake of his own denial and it is heartbreaking to watch. It is also heartbreaking that Mabel is unsure of what's going on but gauges everything through her children....as long as her children love her, she doesn't care what anyone else says. This film is such a troubling watch because we want Mabel to get help and we see the people in her orbit walking on eggshells around her instead of telling her what she needs to hear. It is almost 2/3 of the way into the film before Mabel is actually committed and even sadder is the fact that when she's released, she really doesn't seem any better.Gena Rowlands delivers the most powerful performance of her career as Mabel, a master class in acting that won her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. Rowlands is gutsy and unhinged and absolutely riveting in a role that would be any actress' dream. Mabel is warm and sad and frightening. The scenes where she tries to fight Nick's decision to commit her and her eyes literally roll in the back of her head and the scene where she's in the street screaming at strangers in an effort to find out what time it is because she has to meet her kids' school bus are absolutely devastating. The school bus scene is especially powerful because Mabel appears so mentally shredded you're convinced that she isn't even in the right place to meet the bus and you're surprised when the bus actually shows up. Rowlands so completely commands the screen with this performance that during the 30-45 minutes when her character is not screen (when Mabel has been committed), the film comes to a screeching halt.Peter Falk is explosive in an almost Brando-esque turn as Nick, a husband who is at a loss how to help the woman he loves more than life. Falk has rarely been so powerful on screen and mention should also be made of the director's mother, Katherine Cassavetes, who plays Nick's mother.A once in a lifetime cinematic experience thanks to evocative, in-your- face direction, a pair of devastating lead performances, and a story that leaves you with hope and wonder about what happens after the credits roll.

"A Woman Under the Influence" - like other Cassavetes films - is a difficult one to put into any specific drawer. Which is a good thing as it is able to push different buttons for different people and keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat and actively involved throughout. Not in the Hollywood kind of way, mind you, full with overblown drama, enhanced with musical cues and a heart-warming love story at the core, but rather in a way that makes you care, feel that it matters, that gets under your skin as a person, not just as a movie consumer. The main reasons why the film is so engaging and absorbing lies in the fact that it draws from convincingly portrayed lives rooted in a Seventies reality, the lives of a blue collar husband and a housewife with two kids. It's a familiar constellation with the ordinary domestic mayhem between troubles, challenges and duties, the need to show emotions and to suppress them at the same time, and there's always the urge to escape. It all comes down to a life on the edge, where people as partners in marriage are trapped in the confines of their everyday existence.On the surface "A Woman Under the Influence" is about a woman going mad and people in her environment having to deal with it. But thanks to the characterisations of Gena Rowlands (Cassavete's wife in the part of Mabel Longhetti) and Peter Falk (as her husband Nick) a rather simple story like this gets complex and multi-layered. Cassavetes delivers cinéma vérité the way it is meant to be. The film shamelessly shows us our fears, the emotional abysses between people, confronts us with the resulting traumas, all based on the influences we have on each other. It makes us suffer with both protagonists and their efforts, their eventual helplessness to deal with the situation, to find the common ground of the relationship. And in a struggle things go overboard. "Will you please stand up for me?" Mabel asks in one crucial scene, and if we don't judge first but listen, we might also hear what she's trying to say.