Rating: 
Summary: You just gotta love Gena!
Review: Gena Rowlands is just absolutely wonderful and touching as the blue collar, suburban housewife, Mabel, steadily losing her grip on life and reality. She tries desparately to connect with the people around her, only baffling and embarrassing them and her husband, skillfully played by Peter Falk, who loves her tremendously but cannot understand her as much as he tries. The scene in the film where Falk invites his work buddies home for a spaghetti dinner best illustrates this dilemma. While viewing the video of this film I just wrote his character off as just another stupid, ethnic type, who was just too uneducated and ignorant to be sensitive to his wife increasingly erratic and needy behavior. But I now realize that such a patronizing attitude on my part is totally wrong: mental illness cuts through all ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds. People of all levels, especially those closest, would be at a loss knowing how best to help this special person in our lives who is slipping away from us into darkness. It may be revelation to some that it is Mabel's three young children who find it the easiest to understand and relate to her plight. They just love their mother and accept her the way she is, without any judgment on their parts, and Mabel responds in kind. It is their influence that will help determine whether she recovers.John Casavettes directs "A Woman Under the Influence" with a naturalness (a Casavettes hallmark) that seems as if he were making a documentary film about his own family. As many probably know, Gena Rowlands was married to Casavettes and he utilized her in many of his films, all to his and his audience's great advantage.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic, super duper and wonderful!
Review: I like this movie more than any other of Cassavetes films. Don't get too depressed over it - don't forget to pay attention to the humour in Rowland's performance!
Rating:
Summary: NOT ABOUT ALCOHOL
Review: I'm not sure what film Nancy Price is referring to, but Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence has nothing to do with "alcoholism."
Rating:
Summary: An Important Film!
Review: I've been a Casavettes & Gena Rowland's fan for years and "Woman Under Influence" is probably their greatest achievement. It is a complex, tough movie, terrifying at times (you actually want them to stop a scene already since it is so painful) and the film works on different levels from other films we're used to seeing - that we cannot always concieve at first. I remember seeing it the first time, not totally understanding it, but was drawn to see it again - as I still do since it came out on video. Mabel is unforgettable - with Gena giving the performance of a lifetime (what a face that woman has!) - and Peter Falk is also wonderful. John Casavettes was before his time, had a remarkable eye, capable of conveying feelings and emotions thru scenes and thru his actors that we choose not to see or simply refuse to acknowledge they exist."Woman Under Influence" isn't easy, but worth going thru.
Rating:
Summary: An Important Film!
Review: I've been a Casavettes & Gena Rowland's fan for years and "Woman Under Influence" is probably their greatest achievement. It is a complex, tough movie, terrifying at times (you actually want them to stop a scene already since it is so painful) and the film works on different levels from other films we're used to seeing - that we cannot always concieve at first. I remember seeing it the first time, not totally understanding it, but was drawn to see it again - as I still do since it came out on video. Mabel is unforgettable - with Gena giving the performance of a lifetime (what a face that woman has!) - and Peter Falk is also wonderful. John Casavettes was before his time, had a remarkable eye, capable of conveying feelings and emotions thru scenes and thru his actors that we choose not to see or simply refuse to acknowledge they exist."Woman Under Influence" isn't easy, but worth going thru.
Rating:
Summary: American Bergman
Review: It just doesn't get any better than this. Unflinching, harrowing disintegration of a marriage and a woman's state of mind by our homegrown Bergman, John Cassavettes. Watching Peter Falk blow his stack (going postal before it became fashionable), you have to wonder how much he is contributing to Gena Rowland's meltdown. His performance is one long, slow burn.... Rowlands mines so much nuance and multiple shifts in loony perspective from the gymnastic workout she puts her face through, that even if she never opened her mouth, you'd be sold on her performance. No, you don't have to wait for Marcel Marceau's next jaunt through town. If Buddha never tires of playing that broken record, that long-standing single of being in the moment, then Gena Rowlands, in this performance, is the needle that just won't wear out. If you are a fan of Mike Leigh films, other Cassavettes work, or just dig observing a tornado from one house over, the one left unscathed, then hunker down with your favorite cocktail, remove the cell phone batteries, and thank your own personal deity (or favorite food group, if applicable) for '70's American cinema. This one's a keeper.
Rating:
Summary: Tremendous, Wrenching and Phantasmagoric
Review: John Cassavetes' work is anything but usual: his films are almost inaccessable to many and are deliberately paced. "A Woman Under the Influence" is a truly amazing film, not only for being one of a kind or breaking boundaries, but for giving us one of the 5 best performances of the century: Gena Rowlands as Myrtle. Lastly, the title has nothing to do with drugs, but with a family's pressure (or a husband's, for that matter)on a woman, who's somewhat unstable. Is she crazy? not as much as her husband, in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: 'WOMAN' is too indulgent.
Review: Let me just sum quickly in one word what i felt about this movie: boring. The only reason i did not give it one star was because Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk are the best things about this movie. Peter gives a great performance but Gena is really at her best. She was given an Academy Award nomination for this movie and she deserved it. John Cassavetes was also given a nom for best director. Now that was undeserved. The movie is about a housewife (Gena Rowlands) who seems to be going over the edge and soon after her husband (Peter Falk) starts to worry and when he sees that she may indeed be losing it for reasons unexplained. He tries to institutionalize her. Like i stated before the acting is top notch. The writing was not bad but it contained many scenes which were either not necesary or were too long. If they had re-written the script the movie might have had a chance of being better. But the biggest thing wrong with this movie is the direction. I had heard that John Cassavetes methods weren't exactly conventional and that his actor friendly method bored many people. I have always admired directors who go against convention so i thought i might end up being a fan of John. I thought wrong. His direction in this movie is self indulgent to the point where you feel like sleeping. It is way too artsy and i think he was conciously doing this which is worse. Even the person with the biggest attention span or the most patience could not take this. If it had been handed over to another director the movie might have turned out great. O well. Here's hoping OPENING NIGHT or FACES is better.
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Summary: Alcoholism - a disease
Review: Living with the disease of alcoholism is difficult. A video about the disease is even more difficult. Woman under the influence is one of those videos which pulled it off well. Some of the most profound characteristics of the disease are frustration, confusion and anger. Woman under the Influence created these attributes of the disease through the brillant performance of Gena Rowlands. To be commended is the presentation of the personality before and after recovery. Not only is the alcoholic affected, but the family also who is faced with all their own unknown fears. Videos to view to add depth of knowledge about this disease might include My Name is Bill W. and/or Clean and Sober.
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Summary: Cassavetes goes on his reputation and fails
Review: Most cassavetes movies turned out in masterpieces,but this time he made an error in going over the top in human emotional conflicts . Situations that suppose to be 'Thats Life' are now food for Tear challenging actingperformances .
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