| Introduction | Chap.1 | Chap.2 | Chap.3 | Chap.4 | Conclusion |
2. Introduction
What makes Love Streams different from the other films of Cassavetes is that Love Streams includes both scenes of dreams and metaphors of death. In the films which were made earlier than Love Streams, the tendency that the audience should capture the characters’ inner truth from their faces could be seen. Indeed Faces was the title of one of his films. In Love Streams, the stylish sequences of the dream, in which Cassavetes tries to express the world of emotional depths, cannot be emphasized too much. In relation to the dreamy scenes, the metaphors of death that have never been dominant in earlier films quite often appear in Love Streams.
2.1. Hallucination
Let us review the other film critics’ articles about the dream
scene in question. Raymond Carney and Thierry Jousee mention about
the dream scene and a motif of death in this film. But it seems
that they do not take a deep notice of the relation between dream
and death. Carney notes that in the point that sometimes Love
Streams proceeds with Robert and Sarah’s personal illusion, this
film can be defined as the cinema of dream. Also he points out
that the film puts us in the mind of the world which is deformed
by our own imagination and desire.10
As for the motif of death, Carney states
that the film is about “the closing” apparently. In other words,
Cassavetes inquires into the problems of death, waste of time
and energy, and failure in the film with the background that Cassavetes
was seriously ill at that time .11 I
would like to proceed this chapter focusing on the relation between
the dream scene and the motif of death more clearly.
Normally the dreams and hallucinations are considered as an expression
of internal desire, which is difficult to be realized in an ordinary
life. In the early part of the film, when Robert Harmon, the novelist,
played by John Cassavetes himself, interviews Johnny, an eighteen-year-old
girl, giving her a glass of Champagne and asks when she feels
happiest, she answers that she is happiest when she is cooking.
Robert does not seem to believe about her answer and asks the
same question again. She says she is happiest when she is dreaming.
Robert inquires, “What do you dream?” And the scene cuts out to
Sarah. As we can see from the similar conversation between Robert
and Sarah in the later part of the film, dreaming and the content
of the dream have much weight in this film.
After Sarah has divorced her husband, Jack, she goes to Europe
for a trip because she has been advised by a psychiatrist to do
so and telephones Jack from the airport. She tells him that she
has been cured and not crazy any more. His response is cold and
he says, “ I do not care about you”, in a chilly manner. After
that, Sarah imagines that her car hits and kills her husband and
daughter. We can call this Sarah’s first hallucination. After
her husband has mercilessly hung up the phone, she is beside herself
with indignation. The shot of Sarah’s leaning on the phone suddenly
changes into the objective shot of recklessly driving a car with
the engine roaring. Then the point of view of the camera turns
into the inside of the car. We see the man rushing away. Her mind
is possessed by keen fury all of a sudden. The car is driven violently,
carelessly strikes the tree, and tumbles down after running over
one person and another. The car’s flying in the air is showed
by slow motion and it gives a kind of artificial look on this
dream. We may recognize that two people run over by car are Jack
and her daughter, Debby after watching the close-up of Jack’s
bloody face under the car and Debby’s arm. The moment of running
over is filmed by slow motion, which is rare in Cassavetes’ films,
so it reduces the cruelty of Sarah’s killing. When Sarah gets
out of the car and looks under the car, a strange sound can be
heard from the off-screen, such as men walking on hard ground.
It corresponds with Sarah’s walking on a gravel road and her pounding
heart when she tries to check whether she has killed Jack and
Debby.
The second hallucination (dream) is seen when Sarah loses her
mind and sleeps. When Robert, her younger brother, looks after
her, she starts laughing. At this moment, we can see that Robert
takes Sarah to be crazy. Along the pool (in Sarah’s house in Chicago),
her husband and daughter gather reluctantly near Sarah. She tries
to make them laugh in thirty seconds, betting her love. She makes
the fox’s face, sprays ketchup and mustard at Jack, gives a squirt
pen to Jack, a squirt earring to Debby and takes a picture with
a tricked camera. Turning now to the directing style of this scene,
according to the words of Gena Rowlands, who played the role of
Sarah, the scene was born from pure improvisation.12
The improvisation seems to be successful
in respect of producing a kind of awkwardness, impossibility of
predicting this scene. The silence and the interval between the
conversation pervade through this scene. Sarah talks to Jack and
Debby and she laughs by herself. And the silence and interval
let us share Sarah’s uncertainty and impatience. Sarah’s act of
making the family laugh becomes hastened with the sound of ticking
watch. Her love proves to be one-sided one from her one-sided
talk and laugh.
After all, they do not laugh at all and Sarah jumps into the pool.
Jumping into the pool finally signifies Sarah’s spiritual suicide
by knowing their love has gone. In the point that she bets her
love on the laughing game, if she loses, she would give them her
love that means everything to her. She might be dead spiritually
when her love is robbed. We can see Cassavetes’ own words about
Sarah’s second dream, “ . . . Sarah continue d’avoir ses propres
reves, ses visions. Elle reve de son mari et de sa fille, c’est
une sequence a la fois tres comique et tres cruelle ou elle ≪
parie sur notre amour ≫ qu’elle saura les faire rire“.13
Cassavetes took this scene as very comical and at the same
time as very cruel in the point that Sarah bets her love on making
Jack and Debby laugh. The motif of laugh or the sense of humour
in common can be seen in Cassavetes’ films, which we will discuss
into details in the next chapter, because the act of laugh is
considered to be the same as the act of love. In the scene of
the first half of Faces(1968), another Cassavetes’ film, Maria
and Richard Forest laugh together at Richard’s dirty joke, but
gradually their laugh does not make harmony. This scene shows
that their love is on the cliff and they do not understand each
other.
This second dream has a kind of artificial look from the first
moment. The scene transitions from Sarah’s face in real world
when she is losing her mind to Sarah’s standing silhouette with
the sound of continuous wicked laugh. This deformed sound of laugh
foretells the main motif of the proceeding scene. In the dream
scene, in front of Sarah, the small table and Sarah’s tools were
located. In a way, Debby and Jack might be the audience, who would
watch Sarah’s performance as a comedian. Also drinks are served
as if they were the audience at nightclub.
The pool in the scene of Sarah’s second hallucination and also
other pools in Cassavetes’ films seem to have a particular role.
In Love Streams, the pool might be the bridge, which connects
the real world and the dream. Her dream ends by jumping into the
pool. The pool may symbolize the unknown boundary between reality
and the dream. Losing her love, Sarah has nowhere to go except
into the pool. She turns a somersault before sinking into the
pool. This pool may symbolize “a stream” of water. Carney indicates
that “All of Cassavetes’ work is designed to bring us to an awareness
of the “streamingness” of life and to teach us how to swim with
it rather than attempt to stop its motion”.14
Sarah’s leap into the pool shows
us her trying to mingle in another stream (another family). A
kind of leap has been needed when Sarah had to overcome her hard
feelings. This somersault may be the embodiment of her spiritual
leap.
The pool in this scene appears to have several meanings excepting
those mentioned above. Firstly, the pool and its surroundings
show us life of bourgeoisie, to which Sarah used to belong. Before
the first dream scene, Jack and Debby are playing tennis when
Sarah telephones from the airport. The pool and tennis court in
their house can be interpreted as the bourgeoisie props with the
fact that Jack is an architect. These things turn out to be very
cruel when Sarah goes to the bowling alleys to find a boyfriend
and meets Ken, an ordinary man, with whom she will decide to go
at last. Our expectation for Sarah’s romantic encounter may be
torn down. Sarah’s separation from her family also means her farewell
to life and class of bourgeoisie.
Secondly, the pool may function to draw a line of the antithetical
concepts such as muddle of Sarah’s consciousness and purification
of her mind or purification of her body and awakening of her mind
on the assumption that when she loses her mind, she has hallucination
and then she wakes up to become conscious. After this scene of
the pool, we hear the sound of rain and the scene shifts to a
black screen. In the dark, the door opens and Robert comes inside
with animals in a heavy rain. The pool connects Sarah’s dream
scene and the next scene of real world with water as a common
factor. Trespassing on the pool, she finds herself with Robert
in real world with Robert. This shot transition shows us not only
the shifts from dream to real life but also from Sarah’s past
family to her another family.
2.2 Images of Death
The images of death can be found in the first and second dream
scenes. In the first dream, Sarah becomes a killer and in the
second one, she kills herself spiritually. In Sarah’s dreams,
life and death are always included as crucial elements. Cassavetes
indicates that this film symbolically kills every character, Sarah’s
family and Robert one after another.14
Cassavetes hesitated for two weeks
to add the scene, which expressed death when he was shooting The
Killing of a Chinese Bookie(1976), even if killing was the protagonist’s
final aim. The images of death can also be found in Opening Night(1978)
in Myrtle’s frequent falling down. The motif of falling down is
similar to Sarah’s fainting several times. Sarah’s fainting should
be noted as a sign of the situation of her mind, which is blocked.
What makes Cassavetes put the killing scenes in Love Streams(1984)is
that he may try to say that the excessive form of love takes on
the risk of death. Extreme and desperate love may go nowhere but
only reach insanity or (spiritual or physical) death. While in
earlier films before Love Streams, extreme love such as Mabel’s
love in A Woman Under the Influence(1975) took the form of insanity.
Curiously enough, Sarah seems quite normal and speaks normally
with Robert, her brother, who considers her crazy. But with her
husband and daughter, she says weird things and acts insanely.
Her excessive love toward her family might drive her crazy. As
Sarah declares in the film, “ the important thing is a balance”.
In the family, a balance should be highly required. If a subtle
balance in the family goes wrong, the family member’s balance
goes wrong, too.
2.3. Family Ties or the Impossible Dream
In the third dream, the family seems to be united again. The
dream looks like a kind of operetta performed on the stage. The
motif of ballet dancers is used here again. Generally, in Cassavetes’
films, the motif of a ballet dancer can be seen quite often. We
will see the examples such as the drawings of the ballet dancers
hung on Jack’s apartment in Shadows(1959). These drawings can
be seen for a very short time. In Shadows, the ballet-dancer may
be regarded as the negative metaphor of showgirls, who will appear
on the stage to give the audience a visual pleasure. Also in Minnie
and Moscowitz(1971), there is a drawing of ballet dancers on the
wall of Minnie’s room. The ballet dancer and showgirl can be taken
as opposite faces that stand for day and night.
To return to Sarah’s dream, Sarah’s third dream scene follows
the next scene after the second dream scene. In the first stage,
a black stage is shown. The spotlight is on someone who is walking
to the center of the stage. We recognize the person must be Sarah
as she sings a passionate song about love. Then Debby, her daughter
comes from the left, sings and calls ‘ mammy, mama’ to Sarah on
and on. Jack, the father, tries to stop it and embraces Debby,
saying Sarah would kill Debby. After the ballet dancers’ mechanic
dance, the family gathers, embraces, and kisses. The scene is
illustrated just like an operetta scene. This scene can be said
to be very symbolic. First of all, Sarah seems to play the lead
part on the stage, for the people on the stage surround her. As
a film critic points out, “the scene is taken by wide-angled lenses.
So the whole frame is in focus, but at the same time, the image
on the edges of the frame appears crooked”.15 In Sarah’s dreamy operetta world, the
central part, which Sarah occupies, gets expanded. The distortion
of the image reflects Sarah’s myopic, convenient and hopeful world.
And the very distortion of the scene symbolizes the impossibilities
of a happy family tie that is possible in every ordinary Hollywood
melodrama film.
By contrast, in other scenes with Sarah, Jack and Debby, Sarah
always plays the role of an intruder and is placed aside. The
threads that connect Sarah and Jack, Sarah and Debby are snapped.
This centering of Sarah by herself means that she always wants
to play the central figure in the family.
Here, we will quote comments from Thierry Jousse and Raymond Carney
about the dream scenes. Firstly, Thierry Jousse comments on Sarah’s
third dream as follows:
C’est le reve de Sarah, au moment ou elle navigue entre la vie
et la mort, qui la pousee a revenir vers son destin, cette reconstruction
de la famille, hypothethique mais tellement desiree qu’elle finit
par prendre en forme.16
Sarah’s dream travels among life and death. The reconstruction
of family is formed as she hopes to be in her dream. Whereas,
Carney interprets that Sarah’s third dream as “a stunning reunion
with her husband and daughter in a grand operatic and balletic
wedding ceremony”.17 Also Carney states
the connection between dream and reality as follows:
Insofar as it is staged as a dream sequence, a pure expression
of consciousness, however, Cassavetes is proclaiming its limitations
. . . . Cassavetes values dreams only insofar as they form the
basis for an act of translation into lived expressions and relationships.
Sarah’s imperative, and her film’s, is that she must awake from
her dream and engage herself with a world of expressive meditation,
frustration, and muddlement. 18
As he points out, we cannot help recognizing the clear border
between the dream and real life in Cassavetes’ films. As to the
dream scenes except the third dream in Love Streams, we may find
the difference between Cassavetes’ dream scenes in the plot with
a typical Hollywood film, say Frank Capra’s It‘s a Wonderful Life
(1946), where the dream sequence conveys an important role in
the proceeding of the plot. “Capra began making films in 1921,
and by 1934, when It Happened One Night scooped five Academy Awards,
including best film and best direction, the director had played
out the myth of the American dream, of upward mobility and success
as a result of hard work”.19 In general,
the dream scenes have two roles: ideal that the character longs
for and the situation that makes the characters frightened. In
a film like It‘s a Wonderful Life, the protagonist who becomes
disgusted with his real life and dreams about his future, a miserable
plight. When he awakes, he feels thankful to his life though it
is not wealthy one. In a manner of speaking, the dream scenes
in ordinary Hollywood films seem to be necessary in the plot and
turn out to be one of the opportunities to proceed the story.
On the other hand, the dream scenes in Cassavetes’ film can be
interpreted as a kind of digression in terms of the plot of Hollywood
films.
The middle-aged housewives like Sarah in Love Streams and Mabel
in A Woman Under the Influence, both played by Gena Rowlands,
have a common characteristic. They do love their family too much.
Their love drives themselves to an insane world. With their profound
love, the family should be one, but the result is different. Insanity
leads the family to be parted. Sarah’s love is one-sided. The
object of Sarah’s love does not remain in her family. In contrast,
Mabel’s husband and children love Mabel. As the title suggests,
does love stream continuously? It is the question that Sarah asks
to Jack, Robert and the psychiatrist. The three men said that
love would stop. Her love will stream despite that the objects
of love may change.
Let us see Cassavetes’ own words about the third dream, ”Comme
cela arrive parfois dans la vie, le reve d’ opera a sur elle une
sorte de mysterieux pouvoir de guerison. Elle sort de ce reve
presque hereuse, avec un sentiment profond de liberation, elle
redevient capable de faire face a sa vie“.20
She has an opera-like dream which gives
her the misterious power of recovery. When she is awaken, she
feels happy, liberated and is able to face her life again.
In the first half of the film, Jack is wanting a divorce. Sarah
with Debby negotiates with Jack and mediators in court. Strangely,
Sarah says to the judge that she has no relatives except Jack,
Debby and Jack’s relatives. She talks volubly and makes an appeal
how important Jack and Debby are. At this point, she might be
noted as a lonely outsider who joins Jack’s family by marriage.
Sarah and Mabel are similar in the sense that the housewife is
an outsider in her husband’s family. The desperateness that Jack
and Debby are everything to her makes us believe that she has
no relatives. At this point, we do not know that Robert and Sarah
are siblings. We can find an interesting note about this; Ted
Allen (who wrote the original play of Love Streams)”avait souhaite
que le spectateur comprenne d’ emblee que Robert Harmon et Sarah
Lawson etaient frere et s?ur. Alors que dans le film, c’est seulement
apres plus d’une heure que nous realisons, a l’issue d’une fameuse
sequence au telephone, le lien de sang indelebile qui les rattache."21 The scenes of Robert and those of
Sarah are shown in parallel. They do not meet until Sarah goes
to Robert’s house. Cassavetes’ plot cannot be recognized as a
linear plot typical of Hollywood films. This makes the film too
complicated and difficult for us to understand the whole immediately.
It is hard to predict how Cassavetes’ film will proceed.
We may find that Robert and Sarah are the siblings when we watch
the scene of the telephone conversation, where four people are
speaking at the same time. When Sarah calls Jack, Debby interrupts
and after Sarah has hung up the phone, Robert yells at Jack, “Do
not hurt my sister”.
In the hierarchy of Sarah’s love, her husband and daughter occupy
the top and then a boyfriend. The brother Robert comes last. As
mentioned above, after the divorce, Sarah travels to Paris to
find a boyfriend at the suggestion of her psychiatrist. Eventually
she could not find a boyfriend there and returns to the States
to visit Robert. In this sense, Robert may be the substitute of
her possible lover.
In the last part of the film, Robert proposes to her and to live
together forever. We will see for the first time that Robert says
the words, ‘I love you’, on his own initiative. He does not even
say, ‘I love you’, to his own son. If Sarah accepts Robert’s proposal,
they have to shut themselves in a kind of incestuous world. The
American film scholar, James Monaco gives his opinion about Cassavetes’
characters: “[c]learly, Cassavetes’ people aren’t outdoor folk.
They don’t thrive in the sunshine. They are interior characters
in both senses of the word, and that seems more a theatrical trait
than a cinematic characteristic“.22 Symbolically Robert’s house is always
dark with all of the curtains down except in the morning. He sits
in the dark, drinks, meditates and drifts to search for a night
partner. The night brings intolerable loneliness and lets the
characters change into a different state. They become active and
at the same time they feel uncertainty at night. Curiously, Robert
goes out unnecessarily when Sarah is staying at his home, while
Sarah rises up from bed and goes to bowling alleys for seeking
a boyfriend.
2.4. Ressurrection
Now let us consider one of the most difficult sequences to
interpret in this film. It is the last sequence. It is not only
Sarah but also Robert who sees the hallucination. In Robert’s
case, alcohol has the power of bringing the hallucination. A half-naked
man in the chair at the last sequence may be interpreted as Robert’s
hallucination caused by drunkenness. One half-naked, hairy man
grins and looks like the man who is the buddy of a dog named Jim
which is bought by Sarah as the substitutes for her lost family
members, and had to stay at Robert’s home. He sits just beside
Jim. Thierry Jousse interpreted this scene as follows: “Meme l’apparition
barbue a la fin (c’est peut-etre Noe mais rien ne l’atteste absolument)
participe avec le meme naturel a ce reve bleute, somptueusement
irreel pourtant d’une dechirante realite".23
He wrote that this last apparition gave unreal look on the
end of this film. Lenny may be illusionary because later as the
camera pans from left to right, there is no one in the chair on
which he sat. His hairy and half-naked appearance makes him closer
to the existence of the dog. The apparition of Lenny, the dog-man
may suggest that the dog and Lenny are always together spiritually
even if they are parted. This last scene looks like one of the
most visionary scenes in the film, because it is difficult to
recognize whether it is an illusion or not. Robert who thinks
Sarah is crazy sees a hallucination himself. After that, he puts
his rainy cap on and dances alone. This lonesome dance seems awesome
like a dance with an invisible partner.
When Robert drinks, he loses himself. The characters’ alcoholism
in Love Streams stands out. Robert starts drinking in the morning.
Even when he is with his own son, Albie, he drinks from morning
and gives Albie a cup of beer. Norman Denzin, the author of Hollywood
Shot by Shot: Alcoholism in American Cinema argues that “alcoholism
films . . . configure the alcoholic as a ‘diseased,’ sick, often
insane, violent person who violates the normal standards of everyday
life”.24 This statement may be applied
to Love Streams. Alcohol lets people give access to an unusual
spiritual uplift and madness and by definition a kind of vision.
Finally the nuclear family has to dissipate in this film. The
power of breaking up the family seems stronger than that of uniting
the family. In Sarah’s first dream, the family is dispersed by
the traffic accident. In the second dream, Sarah makes efforts
to unite the family again by the power of laugh. In the third
dream, the dream appears as one scene of the operetta, which happily
draws the union of the scattered family. This dream may reach
a more imaginary stage than other dreams. Through the dream scenes,
Cassavetes describes the imaginary break-up and reunion of the
family.
| Introduction | Chap.1 | Chap.2 | Chap.3 | Chap.4 | Conclusion |
Notes
10 Ibid.,
344.
11 Ibid., 324.
12 Michael Venchura, Rev. of John
Cassavetes and His Works, Ed. and Trans. Takaki Inada. Switch
3 Jan. 1990. 148.
13 Raymond Carney, ed. John Cassavetes: Autoportraits. 38.
14 Raymond Carney, The Films of John
Cassavetes. 256.
15 Atsushi Sasaki, “Emotional Resque.”
Rev. of John Cassavetes’ Films. Cahiers du Cinema Japon 7 25.
Mar. 1993. 87.
All translation are my own.
16 Thierry Jousse, John Cassavetes. Paris: Edition de l’Etoile.
1989. 96-97.
17 Raymond Carney, The Films of John Cassavetes. 269.
18 Loc. cit.
19 Brian Neve, Films and Politics in America. London: Routledge,
1992. 37.
20 Raymond Carney, ed., John Cassavetes:
Autoportraits. 38.
21 Jousse, op. cit., 42.
22 James Monaco, American Film Now.
New York: New American Library, 1979. 301.
23 Jousse, op. cit., 96.
24 Norman Denzin, Preface. Hollywood Shot by Shot. New York:
Walter de Gruyter, 1991.