| Introduction | Chap.1 | Chap.2 | Chap.3 | Chap.4 | Conclusion |
John Cassavetes: Anti-Melodrama
Introduction
Yamashina Yumi
The time has gone when Hollywood was the kingdom of the filmmaking
industry. The novel and surprising devices in making film seem
to have given out. From the late 60’s to the early 70’s, the movement
called “The New American Cinema” took place in the United States.
John Cassavetes lived and made films at that time, but he occupied
a unique position from that stream.
He started his cinematic career as an actor rather than a director.
His first film was made in 1959. Through his life, he made exactly
a dozen of films. In his lifetime and especially after his death,
he was highly evaluated by French and Japanese film critics. While
writing this thesis, unfortunately I could not find enough reference
books about Cassavetes written in English except Raymond Carney’s.
But I could find more books written in or translated into French.
Some of the interviews were taped in English, but I cannot find
anything except those of the French translation version. As this
fact shows, his films have been considered less important in American
film history. In this thesis, I will refer mainly to the books
of Raymond Carney, the American film scholar, and of Thierry Jousee,
the French film critic.
In so-called Hollywood films, the family as the result of romantic
marriage has been shown. Although the family has many problems
and obstacles, the absolute family tie connects the family members.
The children are the treasures in the family. The father’s role
and mother’s role in the family is strictly formed. Even if a
member of the family separates from the family, he/she is still
a member of the family and is welcomed when he/she returns home.
The home is a sweet, sweet home and always will be.
On the other hand, in Cassavetes’ films, the divorce or the changing
relationship of the family appears. In his second film, Faces,
the protagonist deprecatingly says in the middle of breaking up
with his wife, ”no place is like a home”. This demonstrates Cassavetes’
stance on the family. He tried to depict the small and subtle
changes occurred in a family not in the way that other Hollywood
films do. What is most unique in Cassavetes’ films is that sometimes
a person’s excess love drives the whole family unbalanced. The
balance in the family is not reliable forever but becomes the
crucial element to determine the future of the family.
The themes of family and the American dream have been the major
subjects in the American films. Cassavetes continuously and repeatedly
drew from the American middle-class family life. The actors who
can often be seen in his films are his actual families and his
friends. He shot his films, especially his early films with shaky
hand-held cameras. These facts might let him seem as an amateur-filmmaker
making a kind of home-movies. Most of his films did not achieve
commercial success. That gives him a position closer to that of
amateur filmmakers. But what I want to emphasize is that he should
be estimated in the films of mainstream considering how much influence
he had given on the younger filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese
and Jacques Doillon.
The purpose of this paper is to find the changes of Cassavetes’
style and the film-work from his first film, Shadows, to his last
film, Love Streams and to search Cassavetes’ favorite motifs,
which exist in the films of different genres. (He took the film
called Big Trouble after Love Streams, but he did not admit that
he made it because he only replaced another director who was fired.
So I consider Love Streams as his last film.) Moreover, I would
like to mention about Cassavetes’ traits that are unnoticed by
Carney or Jousee, such as the motifs of the laugh and of the dance
in Cassavets’ films.
I would like to proceed in this thesis as follows; in Chapter
One, I will analyze Shadows focusing on the relationship between
the characterization and its cinematic style. In Chapter Two,
I would like to examine the unusual cinematic device in Love Streams.
This film stands out from his films, for it includes the metaphors
of death and dream sequences. An interesting thing is that the
metaphors of death have something to do with the dream scenes.
The French film critic, Thierry Jousse pointed out that there
was a close relationship between Shadows and Love Streams, in
his book titled John Cassavetes. The time interval of these two
films is twenty-five years. Cassavetes’ cinematic style and his
point of view about his life-long theme (love) might have been
changed during the long interval. So analyzing these two films
may lead to a productive result.
In Chapter Three, I will make clear the motifs that frequently
appear in Cassavetes’ films such as laugh and dance. In Chapter
Four, I will deal with the theme of family drama, which is considered
as the only and life-long theme for Cassavetes in the connection
with the melodramatic structure in his films.
In this paper, I limit the discussion on details about Shadows
and Love Streams in Chapter one and two. In Chapter three and
four, I will refer to all of Cassavetes’ films (except Husbands)
in order to analyze his characteristics. As regards Husbands,
I could not watch the film either on screen or on VCR; so I cannot
refer to it. I will also turn my attention to the film scripts,
which did not come out as films, such as Knives to trace John
Cassavetes’ characteristic in the script.
In conclusion, I would like to make clear how the characters’
melodramatic point of view of the world and their adaptability
for real life merge into one in Cassavetes’ films. The reason
why the characters seem so vivid in Cassavetes’ films is that
they finally show their flexibility and spiritual strength to
the real world. The characters’ strength may be derived from the
absolute perception that real life is different from the melodramatic
world.
| Introduction | Chap.1 | Chap.2 | Chap.3 | Chap.4 | Conclusion |