Gloria (1980)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Very well executed

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This is the film Cassavetes did for Hollywood bossmen after the debacle of Opening Night. While it is far from his norm - it has music cues and a score, a gangster plot with a few shootouts - aren't we better off that he had the opportunity to go out with a camera that year and not sit around in dismay? Cherish it, he had only one more left.It is his most straightforward and probably written in a haste, crude in spots, about an ex-mafia moll and a little kid running from gangsters around New York. It wouldn't be out of place in a double bill with Don Siegel really, or not that much.It actually casts light on another side of Cassavetes, less talked about. One was of course the visionary swimmer into streams of soul, tossing and turning in search of a true face.. Another was the actor who took odd paying jobs, wearing a variety of faces to finance that vision when he got back, very much like Welles whom he admired. He had done all sorts, many that were crime stuff on and off TV. Adored Cagney.We have deliberate reference of all those gangster films of old here, gumshoes and broads stuff, Rowlands as female Bogart (she calls other women dames), in turns snarling at bad guys and coolly walking away, waving it all off as dream. But this isn't that cocksure type film; this is about dreams, hopes, frayed nerves.The little boy salvaged from a gangster plot is the center that keeps pulling her back, summoning more of her gangster past around her, including finally the lover she never made it with. You can see how in longer Cassavetes form we would have uncertain life as this woman floats around bars and odd rooms and contrasts with being pulled back to a role she left behind, pulled to get out of it. Chinese Bookie comes to mind. That would have been tremendous to see but we have something else. All of the cool stuff are anachronistic at this point, not really draped with a sense of cool, which is a fashion sense. Cassavetes wouldn't know cool from a bar of soap really, lovable dunce that he was, so it comes out on the other side of the familiar posturing in an unselfconscious way.It's all abit like Rowlands' clothing (foisted on her by Cassavetes). That red kimono would have been fabulous in Rita Hayworth times but looks a bit out of place now, odd. Ditto Rowlands' tough expressions, as if propped up with some effort. This is all far from where the likes of Tarantino and Besson, who grew up in movies, would take these things to iron them out. You can watch this and see how that would play out.There's a weariness without sentimentality here that seeps in through an open window somewhere in this room that you've found yourself in for the night. A sense of not having much more time for masks and that whole posturing where you have to be someone. This is tied in that sweet exchange about "beating the system" between her and boy. People usually don't, but maybe some do, who knows? Who really cares about a system?Underneath it all there's a marvelous sense of wandering that I find myself giving into always in movies; it seems we go everywhere in New York. Underneath the worn fabrics, this is one about the (existential) body that must wear them, about weight that doesn't manage to hold you down. The sublime point as ever with Cassavetes is not giving up.

Gena Rowlands is Gloria, a tough gangster's moll who gets in over her head when she agrees (reluctantly) to take care of 6 year old Phil Dawn(John Adames), the half Puerto Rican neighbor whose parents (Buck Henry and Julie Carmen) realize that they are about to be murdered by the mob. Henry, a mob bookkeeper, has turned over states evidence, and this means a death sentence for him and his family (which includes a daughter and mother-in-law). Gloria makes it clear from the beginning that she doesn't like kids, much less this one, but unconsciously takes him anyway, leading to a show-off between her and old mob associates, which includes her former lover. Gloria isn't afraid of using her gun to keep the mobsters away from the boy, and instantly, this brings sympathy towards her seemingly cold character. Like gangster's molls of the great crime dramas, she is hiding a heart of gold underneath all that toughness, and that makes the film extremely engrossing in watching out how it all unfolds.Rowlands and Adames are powerful in their performances, and they share an amazing chemistry together. Adames doesn't act like any movie kid; he is real. Why he won a "Razzie" (Worst) Supporting Actor award makes no sense to me. Rowlands plays the role as if she were Gloria Grahame, Ida Lupino and Ann Savage all rolled up into one. This lady will take no nonsense, even telling a tough waitress at a Grand Central restaurant to take a hike. In fact, the film makes great use of New York locales not usually seen in mainstream films. The film is filled with many clichés, and the ending is very forumalatic (in a "The Lady Vanishes" way), but it left me feeling totally satisfied. Sometimes formula works, especially when the heart is present, and this film is filled with heart.

I dig this out once a year to watch it and it always gets me. I've been watching this film ever since it came out! The production, including the opening credits, has a foreign feel to it. The opening has watercolor artwork that appears to have been made by a child. The camera sweeps over this while displaying opening credits as jazz music plays.The film takes place in New York City and not the glamorous areas of New York. No, here we see the seedier, gritty, grimy side of New York where children run unsupervised and people are struggling to survive.The acting here is excellent by everyone. Some people say it seems unrealistic and there might be times when that becomes apparent but you can't deny the raw, nervous energy of the film. It's hard to escape the atmosphere here. Gene Rowlands plays her role perfectly and despite her tough as nails attitude you can't help but love her character.Give this a chance. It could become one of your favorite films as it is hard to forget.

Gloria is riveting in its own weird way, but it's exactly because writer/director John Cassavetes doesn't want to play by the rules and make things very easy for the audience. His technique isn't as footloose and fancy free as in his other pictures like Faces and Killing of a Chinese Bookie (which maybe makes it slightly less gritty than those films), but considering that this is somewhat more of a higher-budgeted 'Hollywood' picture it certainly isn't entirely conventional. Which isn't to say that the formula doesn't sound as tried-before, because it does: a young kid possible see some bad things happening involving some gangsters and his family, and is protected by a neighbor, tough-talking, smoking', trigger-happy dame Gloria Swanson (yeah yeah, like the actress), and the two go on the run from the mobsters all over New York City.As with a film like Leon: The Professional, which had gender roles reversed and minus the assassin-tutoring, there's something to be said for the shattering of innocence through the act of murder. In the case of Gloria it's never really clear exactly that Phil's family is dead- he just knows, more or less, he can't get back home to them and has to stick with this lady he (more or less) loves kind of by default. It's a disturbing situation made more-so by how the behavior and conversations go between the uneasy and hard-boiled Gloria and this precocious but bright young Puerto Rican kid who has his father's 'book' the mob wants. Now, some of the plotting isn't always air-tight, and the whole significance of wanting to go to Pittsburgh remains fuzzy throughout.But there's an energy to the picture, something that keeps us wanting to see where these two will go, or how they'll get back together again if they're only momentarily separated by getting off the wrong subway train. It's slightly spiky mixing of melodrama and film-noir, and it has a lot more than I would ever think Cassavetes would be capable of as a genre director. But what makes the film more than just decent fare, or rather a fine but less-than-great diversion for the director, is his wife Rowlands as he title part. She's so good here, so bad-ass, so terribly mis-matched with this kid played by John Adames for all the right reasons for the story (who I can't decide yet was either very good or very bad in the part, or both), that any big story or character gaps can be forgiven. This is a story of paranoia as much as a chase for Cassavetes, and he pulls off this thrilling sensation of 'will they get away with this' than expected.Nowhere near a great film at all, but it's enjoyable and rollicking fun with a crazily impressive lead.