Gloria (1980)

Gloria Swenson's a gun moll all growed up. The mob ain't got time for her no more, and instead of getting' her kicks like she did in the good 'ole days, she lives alone with her cat in a crappy joint in the slums of New York. It ain't much, but it's something, and she's gotta live, ya know? Now get lost.Gloria may have a sordid past in her wake, but she is certainly not a floozy with a few wrinkles too many. She is a tough-as-nails presence that has been around the block plenty of times, unafraid of anything except maybe the cold eyes of death. Gloria is also portrayed by Gena Rowlands, and Gloria is directed by John Cassavetes, her husband.Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes are national treasures, but when your finest pieces of work are confined to ambitiously outlandish independent films, you're bound to only be remembered by the critics who don't have much fun watching Vin Diesel's newest vehicle. They teamed up seven times, but Gloria is the closest thing they ever got to the word "conventional." Despite a slightly over-the-top soundtrack, possibly a quirk added by the mercurial Cassavetes, gone are his usual touches of slapped around camera-work and obvious improvisations. With Gloria, he's an auteur taking a vacation, and it makes for one of his most entertaining, if not one of his deepest, projects.The movie begins in ruins; Jack Dawn (Buck Henry) has made the mistake of double-crossing the mob. Not only has he been skimming money from the profits of their various crimes, but he has also been acting as an informant for the FBI. He, along with his family, are barricaded in a crammed apartment, attempting to hold off hired guns for as long as possible. Then Gloria, a neighbor, comes knocking on their door. She wants to borrow sugar, but instead gets Jack's son, Phil (John Adames). Then the inevitable happens: Phil is orphaned, and Gloria, reluctantly, is forced to take him in. Problem is, the mob knows about it. After this set-up pulls through, the rest of the film acts as a punchy and darkly funny game of cat-and-mouse between Gloria, her newfound Puerto Rican child friend, and, well, the mob.Gloria's only downfall is that it becomes a little monotonous after a while — you can only handle Phil running away and Gloria having to chase after him for so long — but it's much too lovable to really get on your nerves. For once, Cassavetes backs off and lets Rowlands be the star of the show; in the past, it was as if Cassavetes and Rowlands were headlining together (not a bad thing), looking like the cool boho versions of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. But even Ginger Rogers had to have Kitty Foyle all to herself.Everything about Rowlands — her light but steely Wisconsin accent, her big hair, her hastily put-on red lipstick, her cheap high heels — is dynamite. In her other films with Cassavetes (1974's A Woman Under the Influence, 1977's Opening Night), she has had to pour out every emotion she's ever felt, as if she were stripping naked in front of a crowd. But in Gloria, it's clear that she's having fun. Rowlands carries a gun with imposing authority, like a street tough that surprises you with their scrappiness. Even better is her chemistry with the loud and unintentionally funny Adames, who spits out every line with bracing liberation. Gloria is engaging but intimidating, but Phil doesn't much care, and when she can't turn her usual tricks to get him to behave, the playfulness of the film climbs every mountain and fords every stream.Gloria runs a little long at two hours, but it isn't without its charms. Rowlands is a wonderful, wonderful actress, and there isn't a second of the film where we don't ask ourselves what we did to deserve a talent this great in the movie business. I adore Cassavetes with just as much fuss, but this time around, it isn't his show. It's hers, and that's not a bad thing.

I've watched it 3 times in the past 10 days. But I have to admit that when I saw it years back I didn't care for it much. It's funny how your viewpoint changes over the years. I'm just about sure that some of the critics here may also do the same as the years pass. However, most so-called 'critics' are so full of themselves anyway in my opinion.But what's not to love about the film? Directed by John Cassavetes, the music by Bill Conti, the lovely opening credits and artwork by Romare Bearden, the great NYC locations, etc. I love the opening sequence where the watercolor painting of night buildings dissolves into a real night scene and those two opening minutes of the fly over of New York and Yankee Stadium and as we see the Statue Of Liberty you can see that dawn is approaching with the sky lighting up. As the fly over continues under the Brooklyn Bridge then the shot of the bridge with Manhattan in the background and George Washington bridge in the lower part of the frame. And finally the camera pans to a day game at Yankee Stadium to zoom up on the bus approaching. I did spot a continuity glitch where the 3 teens are running toward the El and there's a crowd of people on the corner and when they show them running from the bus the crowd is missing. Big deal. One more comment before I go when they show Gloria and Phil at the cemetery and the scene slowly dissolves with the gravestones and laps into the bridge shot of NYC skyline and I thought how the skyscrapers seemed to symbolize the gravestones too. Life and death in the Naked City.I Love This Movie

I won't relate the storyline - it's all over the place here. Just trust me on this: GLORIA is a wonderful modern noir, full of kicks and energy and schtick. It belongs to its time and its setting - the 'not nice', hot, sweaty NYC of the late 70's - as much as any great Warner Bros. classic. And Gena Rowlands...oh, my. As with many a classic, there are flaws all over the place, from the murdering of the family in the beginning - dad and mom know what's going to happen and everybody just hangs around, tense and fearful? - to the adorable boy's fairly wretched performance. Doesn't matter. Rowlands takes this flick, straps it on her back, and runs. She is nothing short of sensational, as she was as well a brilliant actress. Too bad she limited herself to (mostly) her husband's films. But, they gave us this. And, if you need to learn how to ride a subway with attitude, order a cold beer, or treat a cabbie, watch and learn.

What really made me pity this movie is its idea and what it got of elements. The Beauty and the Beast in the action genre.. Great, and that was before movies like (Léon - 1994) came out, but it seemed that a tornado of naivety hit the whole thing ruthlessly. It needed a lot and a lot and a lot to be a great movie. The dealing with the possible good material was highly provocative where some scenes deserved the laugh, because the writing (Gloria threatens the whole gang in a restaurant!), or the directing (the boy says : "I love you to death" while the camera is almost shooting only his forehead !!?), or the acting (The mafia men couldn't act, John Adames as the kid was unbearably awful = John Cassavetes's responsibility).Elaborately, It forces me to believe that its script had been written (read : fabricated) in 2 days, especially when it relies on the dialog to develop everything, and the dialog was too far-fetched to be logically possible. Also with matters like killing the family at the beginning which's my definition for horrible hastiness, or the end where it turns out that Gloria is Supergirl or the woman of steel, which's quite nothing in familiar flicks, but on the top of OTHER catastrophes here, it is pain barrier. I become so sick whenever I watch artistic movies that lack everything except the laziness, and proudly it brags with that in the name of novelty, realism, whatever. Here, the anguish is double because it's not a movie like that, it's an American thriller with different idea and a dull everything I suppose ! It looked as low as some Blaxploitation movies while it isn't one, it just took the worst of them.Some would say "It's a classic", and other would say "it's the worst ever" ! Actually it's a movie you can summarize its status by the irony between (Rowlands) who got an Oscar nomination for it, and (Adames) who got a Razzie nomination for It (and fairly won !), so IT WAS the Beauty and the Beast indeed ! And I ranked it as one of the worst Buddy-movies, if not the worst ever. Though, when I first watched it I was a kid (a freak kid who loves movies more than life!) so I loved it so much. In fact I think (Gena Rowlands)'s acting was impressive, she owned the role and the screen, if only that was through another script! The cinematography tried to be as non-Hollywood as it could be, I recall clever sequence with a running steadicam (in 1980) in which Gloria escapes with the kid from the restaurant, as a whole it managed to be somewhat harshly real yet through bad-made unreal story ! Plus it didn't add anything profound.. Unlike the music.(Gloria) as a movie, fails on the romantic level and sucks on the thrill level, but the music helps out to redeem both. Bill Conti handled it seriously more than anybody got involved in it. OH MY GOD, his music was like a diamond in the rough. No doubt it's bigger than the movie. It managed to give it a sublime soul, a touch of greatness, and wide shadows to the flat characters and fabricated events. Maybe Conti believed in the story and the movie to the utmost, or he didn't watch the movie but how he loves his work and uses to do it rightly ! Or maybe he did watch it so he was forced to lift it up and cover its faults. It created such a personality for the weak movie, that embodied the Latino background, the chase's feel, the rebellion sense of the title's character, and the passion between her and the kid; nearly all what the movie flopped at !. I think Conti was inspired by Yoakhen Rodrego's Concerto D'aranjuez, its spirit seems clear somewhat in the tunes. Anyhow, It's some catchy soundtrack that marked a movie with high quietly lacked it badly on so many levels. Sometimes, rare times, the music makes the glory of some movies, but Bill Conti just revived it, and donated it with some sensitive case or dramatic deepness, but it needed more and more to be as larger than life as its music.So take the soundtrack and remake (Gloria), I'm not kidding, (Gus Van Sant) sort of did it with (Bernard Herrmann)'s music through his (Psycho - 1999) but not to be like it, as a deformation for its original, because it can't stand more inferiority.