Another one of John Cassavetes improve films. This one's even less structure than Husbands was.
So the story (if one dares to say there is a story) revolves around two characters and one group of kind of young punkish guys.
The group of punks act very similar to how the main characters in ''Husbands'' act. Almost as if there's some sort of spiritual predecessor.
Their stories the most disjointed of the lot. As they move from location to location drinking, talking and sometimes flirting with random girls. It seems as if they have no real Direction.
The story ends with a group of them being beaten up by another group of men and one of them deciding, maybe to give up this life of constant loitering and binge drinking.
The closest thing to a leading role in this film would be Lelia Goldoni she plays this kind of naive 20 year old girl who lives with her brothers* She gets involved with this guy romantically and goes to bed with him at some point. She later regrets it as it was her first time and she found it miserable.
The guy kind of tries to make things better but doesn't really know what he's doing. She wants nothing to do with him. So there's a whole drama revolving around her trying to get away from this guy and him trying to make amends.
As the film goes on she gets introduced to this other guy who wants to go on a date with her and she'll tries to push him off by acting more stuck up. She decide to date him later on but she takes on a whole new tone. No longer shy and naïve, but tough and authoritative.
show her ass him for not bringing her flowers on their date, make him sit around at her house for hours on end as she gets ready, ridicule him for his attitude and daring to try and talk to her family.
And it's not as if this new guys not deserving of the attitude that shown towards him. He's a bit of an arrogant self-centered jerk and constantly insists that a woman's real job is to sit and look pretty and let the man take hold of any situation.
But her story doesn't really end with any true closure. Just her dancing with this guy at some nightclub somewhere and she still feels very depressed about her former relationship and he tries to act a little bit more sincere towards her.
Then finally there's the musician play by Hugh Hurd .Now Hugh has been trying to make a name for himself in New York and sometimes he goes abroad wherever he can just to make a quick buck. But things aren't going well for him he keeps getting demoted to secondary gigs introducing other people in front of him. He's annoyed that he can't seem to get a good break in this town and that his talents aren't really going towards anything. His brother was also his agent has been trying to set up better deals.
but the two just can't seem to do anything right and it's never really implying if they get anywhere. In the end it said that Hugh might try to improve his personality or even his act so they can get farther out there but we're never shown anything.
Here's the number one problem with me trying to sum up all these different stories. I'm not sure if anything I just said was even remotely accurate to what actually happened in the film. Because the movie isn't really structured so that you're witnessing a story, instead it focuses more on the experience and the character interaction with one another.
That's what all these movies are about. Character! The environment, the story, the grander prospects are all secondary.
In a way it almost feels as if they're inconsequential as if none of it really matters you see these people interact with one another and then that's it there's nothing more to it. Like an Auntie soap opera. What the larger-than-life drama has been whittled down into something so simplistic and so basic that you're both left unfulfilled and yet satisfied at the same time. Or maybe I'm just spouting a bunch of nonsense and trying to make up excuses for a strangely produced film.
It doesn't matter to me I want to recommend this movie regardless. To anybody who loves character and people and it almost genuine reaction how we as human beings work. It does with all the TV shows on TV can't do it gets you invest in the little man and the simple world. the really feel as if you're there living with these people and their day-to-day struggles.
It's definitely a film that feels ahead of its time, the way the characters interact and speak with one another feels very early 70s as opposed to late 50s.
a lot of this comes down to the improvisation of the actors. Instead of being forced to speak in a way that sounds correcting a Hollywood film they're allowed to speak as they might naturally do and in doing so it gives them a much more human element and brings them out of the old Hollywood establishment of film or everybody has a slightly posh or exaggerated tone. In fact I might be one of the major problems with this movie for some people. Everything has a bit of a monotone feeling to it if people aren't naturally lifting their voices and trying to sound more dramatic than they really are. Simultaneously any scene involving violence feels a little bit more real.
It's also important to note that this is a altered and recreated film. There's an earlier version of this movie floating around from 58 which apparently had a massively different feeling and atmosphere to it, with everything being more bleak. But I haven't been able to find it and from what I've heard it wasn't all that good.
and I can't complain about the movie being altered too much as its recreated second edition is its self a pretty good film and it's been said that it helped usher in a new age of independent filmmaking in the United States.
*So there's this whole thing or it's implied that she's an African American Girl because her brothers are both black. But not only does she not have any resemblance to a black person but it's never really implied that her brothers are biological in any way.
They act like a close-knit family, but I looked at it more as a adopted kind of family.
A kind of band together situation what are small group of people growing up of one another looks of each other as a family.
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