Gloria

Gena Rowlands was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrait of gangster’s moll Gloria Swenson: a tough, chain-smoking broad who’s run with the mob all her life, but now finds herself running from it to protect her next door neighbour’s orphaned six-year-old kid. And she hates kids. This one especially. It’s a gift of a part and Rowlands (whose favourite actress was Bette Davis) eats it up. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the movie is the odd one out in Cassavetes’ filmography in its romanticism and escapist underpinnings, but it’s also a terrific New York movie, pulsing with aggravation and hard boiled as they come.

I’m a feminist in that I’ve been a self-supporting woman since I was eighteen years old. I am a wife to a husband; I’m a mother to three children. I am not a cupcake actress – though I have nothing against them and I don’t mean that to sound condescending. My emphasis in life is deeply split between these two things – to be an actress and to be a mother. It’s a great conflict in my life.

Gena Rowlands

It’s clear from the opening montage that we’re in the hands of a master.

Geoff Andrew, Time Out

A powerful, exhilarating piece of work which whirls through its changes from humour to violence so skilfully that it seems to be all over much too soon.

Meaghan Morris, Sydney Morning Herald

Playing a fearless, harsh-talking broad, a female Lee Marvin, Gena Rowlands discovers things she’s never done for Cassavetes in the past: a flair for blunt comedy, a stiff-shouldered walk, a way of dropping acid remarks from the corner of her mouth.

David Denby, New York magazine