Gloria

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 1980, 123 min
Section: John Cassavetes

Synopsis

Made for Columbia Studios, this adult fairy tale marks a significant departure from Cassavetes’ independent work. His second venture into the crime genre (after The Killing of a Chinese Bookie), it offers a valentine to his actress wife Gena Rowlands and to the city of New York. As tough yet tender Gloria, an ex-con Mafioso mistress, Rowlands has the role of a lifetime, one that earned her a second Best Actress Oscar nomination.  Armed with only her wits and a purse-sized pistol, Gloria goes on the run when gangsters realize she is protecting six-year-old Phil, a mouthy tyke whose entire family was eliminated in a mob hit.  Phil’s father, a double-dealing accountant, left him a book recording various illicit transactions and the crime syndicate wants it badly. Gloria doesn’t like kids. She prefers to baby her pet cat and take pride in her apartment, but Phil’s mother was her friend and she feels a responsibility.  As Gloria sacrifices the comforts of her straight life (and perhaps makes the ultimate sacrifice), Cassavetes creates an atmosphere suffused with an autumnal feeling of death. He maintains a palpable tension throughout and allows the ending to be understood as ambiguous.

About the director

see Tribute to John Cassavetes