John Cassavetes John Kasowitz
John Nicholas Cassavetes, December 9, 1929, New York City, New York, USA
February 3, 1989, Los Angeles, California, USA
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This article is translated from senses of cinema
Speaking of the great director John Kasowitz, the first thing to say is to admit that he was an actor —not only because he was the first to perform in his passion for the arts; but also that many of his close associates, including his wife, were actors; and Kasowitz himself has performed in dozens of films, television series, or stage plays.
Acting as a professional and artistic pursuit was crucial to director Kasowitz, because most of what he did as a director served his actors. For a good character, the storyline and technology are secondary, in contrast, the relationships of the characters in the film, the performances can find the truth through the film and make the film itself vibrant, which is what Kasowitz really pursues. Therefore, people can glimpse from his directing works how the director, screenwriter, and actor are uniquely combined with him.
The first official start of Kasowitz's career as an actor was in 1949, when he entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduation, he performed at the Regional Theater and joined the U.S. Army Reserve Corps. In the early 1950s, Kasowitz starred in a minor role in a television series and played his first film role, The Night Holds Terror (directed by Andrew L. Stone, 1955).
During this time, he met Gina Rowlands, a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, like him. The two married on March 19, 1954, and while their marriage wasn't all smooth sailing — they each had their own creativity and personality — it was still a great film partnership and love story. From 1954 to 1956, Kasowitz starred in dozens of television shows, and in 1956 he starred in director Don Siegel's film Street Fighter. While starring in the television series Johnny Staccato (1959–60), Kasowitz was also on his way to his directorial debut.
Kasowitz as an actor and his wife Gina Rowlands
As Kasowitz puts it: "The Shadow (1959) began with a dream, on January 13, 1957, in an attic in New York. The loft is home to Kasowitz's studio, where Kasowitz, theatre director Burt Lane and a select group of actors refine the scene based on an initially rough overview of the characters and plot.
The idea was to improvise and shoot a feature film. During a nightly radio talk show, Kasowitz appealed that if anyone interested in a $7,500 project (about blacks and whites) could fund the film project with donations. As a result, by that weekend, there were $2,000 in donations, most of which were no more than $5.
Racial tensions were part of Shadow's original vision, but Kasowitz declined to divulge other information publicly. While the film's subject matter is controversial, the creative effort made in it is clear: "Cinema is a complete experiment, and our main purpose is to learn." Kasowitz said.
Shadow poster
Shadow is imbued with a passionate and joyful appeal, which makes the film's granular texture, poorly connected dialogue, jumping editing, occasionally unnatural scene scheduling, and drastic changes in focus and lighting, all of which become relevant wholes.
Ben Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni, Hugh Hurd (Ben Carruthers, Lelia Gudoni, Hugh Hurd) contributed heartfelt performances, and the vividness of the three siblings they played, plagued by racial exclusion and identity, also benefited from Kasowitz's preference for long shots. When a scene goes wrong, he starts from scratch, giving the actors the space to rest and fully understand the character.
Needless to say, Shadow is a film of its time, about the hustle and bustle of the city, the quick conversation, the moodiness of America's Post-World War II "Beat Generation." In an age of anti-secularism, people talk about art and think about life self-righteously. Conversations involving sexual and emotional relationships are casual and dispensable, and some are passionate and cathartic. Family turmoil is a key point in the film's narrative, a theme that Kasowitz's work often deals with.
Stills from "Shadow"
After three pre-screenings, Shadow was re-filmed for another 15 days, and is nearly an hour new and more refined than the original version. Some people have seen and appreciated the original rough cut, notably the critic and filmmaker Jonas Mekas, who sees the final release as a concession to commerce.
Contrary to the statement at the end of the film that the film was improvised, the final version was mostly scripted. Some street scenes were captured in the air by hiding cameras and shooting at a distance, as the crew lacked the necessary permits and they had to evade the police. Some of the interiors were actually filmed in the Variety Arts studio. Much of the advanced aesthetic in the film comes from the necessity and lack of experience of shooting. “
The film was appreciated in exactly what we were trying to eliminate," Kasowitz later commented. Elsewhere, he has also claimed: "When we made this film, we didn't know what the first thing was to do. I never thought I would be a director. However, he is still a director. A rarity in the relatively niche avant-garde art scene, Kasowitz quickly and somewhat unexpectedly signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, which let Casowitz direct the film himself, giving him a budget of $350,000, as well as studio members and main actors. With a strict six-week shooting cycle and strict filmmaking policies, Kasowitz made a lesser-known film, Too Late Blues (1961), due to a lack of room for inspiration, and Kasowitz began to be considered a defection to Hollywood by many.
Poster of "Amorous Partial Encounter with Thin Lover"
Despite the different production environments, "Amorous PartialIty Meets Thin Lover" inherits the theme of Kasowitz's films embodied in "Shadow"—loyalty to artistic pursuits in the face of conflicting ambitions.
It's a story about a musician, a bunch of noisy men with different professions and personalities who maintain a highly unstable but enduring friendship. These people, who have different views of their personal future, are regulars in Kasowitz's films. The twists and turns of love stories played by Bobby Darin and Stella Stevens form the side story of the film, which adds an unexpectedly frank sexual element to the film, even if it is somewhat clichéd and outdated.
Stills from "Amorous Partial Encounter with Thin Lover"
Amorous Meets Thin Lovers has a more controlled and balanced style than Shadow, so the film is more consistent but less dynamic and visual. In the case of explicit execution of the script, the theme of the film is also more narrow.
"Shadow" shows narrative tension and has a sometimes unstable but rather wonderful but structural arrangement, in contrast to "Amorous Partial Encounter Bo Lover" caught in an unnatural serious atmosphere. The film tried to be fashionable, and Tom Charity's voice acting for the film "deliberately mixed jazz swing and chilly poetry." But as Marshall Fine puts it, even in 1961, "Amorous Encounter with Thin Lovers" looked "clumsy and rigid." Even with some creative compromises, the film's second attempt as Kasowitz was ultimately complete.
Kasowitz's next work, A Child is Waiting (1963), was produced by Stanley Kramer, a respected enthusiast of "problem films."
Poster of "The Heart of Parents in the World"
The story begins with Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland as teachers in a children's psychiatric hospital, and it is one of the films that best highlights the Hollywood temperament of Kasowitz's films. The poignant soundtrack makes the film more vivid and fluid, and even though the film ripples the heartstrings of the audience with a dramatic plot, its overall tone is indeed gentle and approachable. This is also perhaps Kasowitz's most sentimental work.
Outside of the private dimension, Kasowitz repeatedly mentions themes in The Heart of a Parent, such as trying to find meaning and purpose in life, how to define normalcy in an alienated world, and how to find balance between professional responsibilities and personal emotions. However, the film can be seen that Kasowitz encountered a low point in his career as a director. He quarrels with the fragile Garland, clashes with Lancaster, and as he struggles with Kramer on the final edit, the interference of the possessive original novel author, Abbey Mann, is even more rampant.
Stills from "The Heart of parents in the world"
Kasowitz's next film is an unprecedented adventure —
According to Ray Carney, Casowitz completed the filming at his own expense. Faces (1968) provides a controversial and overly exhaustive examination of the midlife crisis and the communication barriers that came with it.
During filming, very little equipment was used, some cast and crew were not even paid (this arrangement was not the first or last in Kasowitz's films), and "Faces" was successfully filmed by begging, borrowing, and occasionally stealing when necessary. Six months of shooting (mainly at night so that everyone could do other work during the day) completed 150 hours of footage, during which there was about 320 pages of script. After three years of post-production, Faces had an initial 220-minute cut.
Even if various difficulties are encountered in practice, from beginning to end,
Faces maintains the independence of the production process, which means there are no artistic compromises.
The Face poster
"Faces" is the peak of Kasowitz's natural emotional outpouring. Through undulating editing and whimsical camera selection, vivid close-ups of the faces of the characters create a strong sense of intimacy. The roughness of the film reflects everyone's behavior. Men can be rough and have some intermittent cruelty, while women can be elusive and they have their own codes for social/sexual behavior. Each group is eager to criticize the other without acknowledging their own emotional fragility and uneasiness.
The film is a chaotic combination of audiovisual elements, and it is difficult to distinguish what is shot according to the script in the film and what is played arbitrarily on the spot. The film is full of cheers, laughter, excited demeanor and constant movement. Large, large, unrelated conversations are going on, and no ordinary stories are happening.
The story of Faces is character-driven, and it is a depiction of individuals governed by ups and downs. Physical and verbal interactions are redundant, and reactions become irrelevant, which reflect and influence the formal character of the film. When it is simply a matter of documenting emotional wars in the trenches, the state of chaos has embarrassing details and astonishing durations. In this way, the audience experienced the war like the characters in the play.
Stills from "The Face"
Kasowitz started shooting Faces without any expectations, but the film was a breakthrough, garnering a lot of awards and critical accolades, as well as more than $8 million in revenue. The film is intimate but not hidden, it belongs to that era, and it is still amazing at this moment," Fine commented, "at the same time, the film is a delicate deconstruction of the roles played by men and women — when these characters collapse and they can no longer pretend, the act of being true to the heart has explosive energy." Kasowitz thought the days of making this film were the best of his life.
While U.S. distributors were still promoting Faces, Kasowitz was ready to make a film that seemed more personal. The three main characters in Husbands (1970)—Harry (Ben Gozana), Archie (Peter Falke), and Gus (Kasowitz)—all convey complex inner feelings through tangled behaviors, showing a common frustration from aphasia. Fine thinks "The Husband" may be the most controversial of Kasowitz's works, and it is also his most adventurous attempt to let go of his hands and feet. The subtitle at the beginning of the film declares that the film is a "comedy about life, death, and freedom", which is indeed the subject of discussion in the film (although the comedy part is controversial).
The film is about three friends, battered by the death of their common acquaintance, drunk and frantically exploring what could have happened and what the future holds. Their introspection carries a strong sense of self-judgment, but men are always living in the moment, although they have found some unpleasant truths about themselves, about the limitations of life, about love relationships (even if only Harry's wife appears in the film, the phenomenon of men getting confirmation of identity because of the state of marriage in which they live is very interesting).
Poster of "Husband Jun"
"Fu Jun" adopts a straightforward performance and shooting method, and there are some passages that have no effect on the plot progress and character reveals, it is difficult to trigger empathy, it is difficult for the audience to understand what is happening in the play, and it is difficult to digest the meaning expressed in it. The film is filled with non-stop movement and conversation, while Kasowitz's intractable camera uses an insightful subjective perspective to record unrestrained, even improvised, random real-world images. "Like life, the film is slow and frustrating," Charity writes, "only those that deliberately make omitted and streamlined films are not like that." ”
The machismo rudeness of the private sphere is perpetuated into the public space, which points to self-centeredness and carelessness that ignores the surrounding environment. Men associate with women in a way that is no more comfortable than if they were wrestling drunkenly in the bathroom. Kasowitz deliberately filmed a version of "Fu Jun" to cater to executives operating in Colombia. They were satisfied with the film and found it highly entertaining. Despite this, and perhaps because of this, Kasowitz continued to revise the film, but the final release suffered both critical and commercial failures.
Stills from "Husband Jun"
During the release of "Husband," Kasowitz spent three weeks writing Minnie and Moskovsky (1971). As Charity puts it, "It's his most positive and romantic film, celebrating marriage and family." This is therefore a delightful and pleasant work for the aggressive and self-assertive director.
There is a character with a similar personality to Kasowitz, and Simon Kassel plays the free-spirited moscow Witz with long flowing hair. Like Kasowitz's other types of characters, Moscow Wittes is outgoing and noisy, but more charismatic, living at the bottom of society, in stark contrast to the exquisite and elegant Minnie. "Movies are a conspiracy." Minnie said she accused the film of manipulating viewers to believe in false ideals of power, love, and good men. She is a woman who resembles the men in "Husband," an adult who has reached cynical middle age, lives a lonely life, disillusioned, but still respectful of Hollywood.
Moscow Witz is more personable than Kasowitz's male character, and when he happily acts according to his own wishes, he shows a moving pleasure. Minnie, on the other hand, was conservative and calm. Like many Casowitz-style romantic scenes, a one-on-one drama of indulgence between Minnie and Moskovitz is staged, during which time a young and profound love gradually emerges. They met and then married after four days of acquaintance, and such a romantic comedy is refreshing, and the audience can't help but be attracted to this incredible engagement process in real life.
Poster of Minnie and Moskvaites
Before the planned sequel to "Husband," Kasowitz wrote A Woman Under the Influence (1974), in which Gina Rowlands played a key role.
The original plan was to shoot an interrelated trilogy, considering that The role of Marbel, played by Rowlands, was emotionally and physically demanding, and that a film might be enough for the film to achieve the desired dramatic effect. After convincing the Motion Picture Association of America to give him the title of resident filmmaker, qualify for the use of instruments, and promise to provide free on-the-job training for his students, one of Kasowitz's most successful films was about to appear.
Poster of The Affected Woman
The chaotic state of life of Nick and Marbel is unusually clear as Mabel prepares for their night alone in a panic. Next, viewers wonder if there is a real incentive for the confusion, perhaps because Mabel's self-provoked panic, or perhaps the anxiety comes from an overwhelmed medical condition.
Most of Kasowitz's characters behave in a somewhat insane manner, but Mabel is the first to objectively speak of insane. Her childlike whimsy and fickleness make the love between her and Nick difficult to maintain. At the same time, even if Nick sincerely wants to care for Marbel in his own way, he does not have the ability to take care of and understand Marbel emotionally. Marbel chose to face her illness strongly, but in the days that followed, Nick appeared irrational and irresponsible, and even committed dangerous behavior. When Marbel left, the two re-realized their mutual dependence.
Stills from "The Affected Woman"
"The Affected Woman" also presents several extremely warm scenes, full of sincere feelings, but also somewhat clumsy and subtle. At the same time, Nick is unable to empathize with Marbel's pain, which leads to fierce conflict and violence between the two. He dominates Marbel with his rudeness, impatience, and cruel honesty, but Mabel remains enthusiastic and energetic. Mabel is a typical Kasovitz character, and she is an iconic portrayal of Kasowitz's films.
As in Kasowitz's film, where she creates a flustered situation, but she escapes self-analysis (as Kasowitz does with her own films), one of Nick's biggest mistakes is trying to rationalize Marbel's behavior. Kasowitz thinks Marbel's anxiety is normal, saying, "There are no perfect women in my films because I've never seen anyone like that." Carney also sees an autobiographical connection in it, "If Moscow Witz represents Kasowitz's courage to take risks, then Mabel symbolizes his self-doubt, uncertainty, and pain." ”
For the audience and the characters in the play, in the process of gradually adapting to the uncertainty, "Affected Woman" ushered in the end. Like the unsure conclusion that neither The Face nor The Husband has been able to reach a definitive conclusion, in The Affected Woman, all issues remain unresolved.
Did Marbel and Nick begin to face up to the fact that their concepts of marriage and psychological state were fundamentally different? While there is no proper solution, the ending of the film is satisfactory, and in any case, the two are given a chance to breathe, and the love is still there in the chaos. As Carney puts it, Kasowitz's work is "full of hope ... He never gave up on the possibility."
"The Affected Woman" is the perfect balance between Kasowitz's consistently detached aesthetic style and the causal arrangement between events. The film is the stage for Gina Rowlands to show her acting skills, and to a large extent, her phenomenal performance makes her the extraordinary focus of the film. The film received two Oscar nominations, a Best Actress nomination (Gina Rowlands) and a Best Director nomination (John Kasowitz). (Kasowitz is one of eight filmmakers who have received three nominations for directing, screenplay and acting.)
Gina Rowlands in The Affected Woman
Not steeped in the success of his films, Kasowitz soon brought with him The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), a suspense drama about money, murder, and the ups and downs of the underworld. In the film's portrayal of all the ordinary traps, the picture is freely wandering in irrational behavior, off-topic dialogue and narrative jumps, and this deliberate delay or avoidance of answering doubts gives "Murder of the Underground Boss" a sense of repeated confusion.
Set against a backdrop of decadent social conditions, to the average audience, the film feels like it takes place in an exotic world and is filled with the nudity and gore rarely seen in Kasowitz's films. Cosmo Vitelli, the male protagonist played by Ben Gozana, is a symbol of a group. He is a gambler who runs a strip club, and his life is fair but he is also in a desperate situation. But after all, he is a low-level person, and his life is full of helplessness. Towards the end of the film, Cosmo reveals his true inner thoughts, and he speaks a speech that foresees his future depravity.
Both the film and Kasowitz's next work confirm the idea that Cosmo's performer nature gives him (not) the ability to construct his own personality out of the constraints of reality.
Murder of the Underground Boss poster
Commenting on Murder of an Underground Boss, Gazzara said, "This may be a metaphor for Kasowitz's life: people with dreams have to fight those who don't have vision. ”
Not surprisingly, Kasowitz had trouble with both post-production and distribution. The film was eventually released, but it fell short on word of mouth and at the box office. The original cut was only shown for a week before it was retracted and re-cut, only to reappear two years later. Kasowitz (a little against Gazzara's comments) admits, "This is the only film I've made with impure motives... I see it as a mind game and I don't indulge in it. It's a movie that has nothing to do with me and how I feel about life. ”
Ultimately, because of the film, Kasowitz himself lost nearly $2 million, and lost most of the accolade that "The Affected Woman" brought him.
Murder of the Underground Boss also has a special Chinoiserie poster
By the end of the 1970s, Kasowitz and Rowlands were faced with the harsh truth that the entire entertainment market was declining, and their subsequent collaborations were a direct reflection of the process of aging and the non-stop struggle between men and women in the creative industries.
In Opening Night (1977), Rowlands played Myrtle Gordon, a fragile stage actress facing a crisis. She was tired and sad, and she drank and smoked before taking the stage. This was just the beginning of the deterioration of her physical and wonderful condition, and her state also affected the people around her. Like the protagonists of other Kasowitz films, she is in a transition period or a turning point in her life.
"The Night of the Premiere" presents yet another example of blurring the boundaries between art and personal life, which is also a common situation in Kasowitz's films. In the moment when the actor who played with Myrtle slapped her on the stage, the real and fake violence became indistinguishable, and since then the stage characters and real identities have begun to be confused. The drama in the play is tingling with uneasiness, followed by Myrtle's own confusion and anxiety, when she says "I'm in trouble, I'm not acting," and her sense of self sends her into self-destruction.
Poster of "Premiere Night"
It's as if the whole world is one big stage, which may explain why so many of Kasowitz's characters are happy to perform —singing, telling jokes, competing, etc.—even if not like The Night of the Premiere, which has a clear theater setting. Acting is part of their real lives. "The emotions and energy on stage shift to life off stage," George Kouvaros commented, "in these films, the dilemma encountered by the characters cannot be summed up simply as, as Deleuze said of Jean Renoir's film, 'Next, the play ends and life begins?'" The more practical question of joining the world is addressed in Kasowitz's films: When the roles played and the subjects of existence are unified, how can work and survival continue? ”
At the end of the film, when Myrtle unleashes herself on stage, in a way, it is her improvisations in life that make the whole show.
Stills from "Premiere Night"
"The Night of the Premiere" encountered various troubles in production. The film union suppressed the non-union crew, the distribution encountered geographical restrictions, and the film itself suffered a cold reception in the domestic market. If Murder of the Underground Boss was a commercial failure," Charity says, "Premiere Night didn't turn the other over." ”
In February 1979, MGM contacted Kasowitz to create a story for young actor Ricky Schroeder. Kasowitz completed a screenplay titled One Summer Night, which was later renamed Gloria. Kasowitz had no intention of making the film himself, believing the project was too commercial. But he needed a job, and that's how he took over the film.
Gloria (1980) depicts the prominence of New York in the late 1970s, and the film even features real gangsters and street wanderers as actors. This is the most New York-inspired of Kasowitz's films since Shadow, with shots aimed at real street scenes, covering both famous landmarks and lesser-known street corners. Gloria, played by Rowlands, is passively involved in a world of desire and violence, and worse, there are children in it. Once the mistress of a gang member, she is not innocent and simple, and she even has her own network of connections. But deep down she was kind and compassionate. It was six-year-old Phil Dawn (the character written for Ricky Schroeder), the son of a beloved gangster target on the run, who contributed to her transformation into good.
Poster of "Lady Glorie"
"The Lady who sucks on Lori" is Kasowitz's most conventional and rich film. Bill Conti's passionate soundtrack, suspenseful story, comedic elements as a foil, a mixture of irreconcilable formal styles, and even a car chase scene are enough to show that the film wants to bring general satisfaction to the audience. It may not be a Kasowitz classic, but there is no doubt that it is a beloved work.
Aside from some limitations in the arrangement of the shots, "The Lady Of Gloria" is one of The Hardious but high-quality films that Kasowitz made effortlessly.
Stills from "The Lady Of Glorie"
In Three Stories of Love and Hate, Kasowitz found a story that matched his next feature film, Love Streams (1984). Sponsored by Cannon Films (founded by Israeli cousin Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus), Torrent of Love boldly introduces audiences to the chaotic lives of alcoholics Robert Harmon (Kasowitz), who plays with women, and his sister Sarah (Lolands).
Sarah is emotionally unstable and is struggling with Jack Larson (Simon Cassel) for custody of her child. In Kasowitz's films, the bond of family only adds to the hardships of life. First Robert and his son were estranged, then with Sarah. Although the young women in Robert's house came and went, he could not maintain a strong relationship with anyone. At the same time, Sarah lacks the ability to take care of herself and is emotionally traumatized, even as she tries to remain optimistic in the face of disaster.
The two live extraordinary lives, and of course, the film is primarily about how their lives are. Are they doing their best for life? It's the importance of keeping moving forward that motivates them to persevere: "Love is a stream," Sarah says, "and it flows without stopping." ”
Stills from "The Torrent of Love"
Aside from shooting crash scenes in slow motion and using a rather astonishing aerial movement shot — both a rare technical attempt by Kasowitz — Riptide of Love is basically plain.
But the characters' temperament is not like this. In addition to the faltering of his personal life, irresponsibility and easy abandonment are traits common to Robert and his sister Sarah. They laugh hysterically and reveal their inner emotions with unbridled manners. Kasowitz admits that The Torrent of Love is "a very crazy movie."
Kasowitz's next work is arguably the one with the faintest traces of his authorship, and it is also his last film. At the invitation of Peter Falk, Kasowitz took over as director after Andrew Bergman withdrew Big Trouble (1986). Ironically, the budget for the most de-Kasowitz's personal stylized film is the most adequate.
The machine-gun wits of The Great Conspiracy show Kasowitz's love of wit and eloquence, and the film resembles the re-enactment of Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) or, rather, the story of Falk and Alan Arkin in Arthur Shearer's The In-Laws (1979) after the improvisational reorganization. The characters in the film are still consistently lawless, and Conti's soundtrack moves the story forward as usual. But unlike other Kasowitz films, the anxiety revealed in "The Great Conspiracy of Careful Eyes" does not come from real and sour dramatic events, but from the nonsensical conspiracies and tricks in the play.
Although it is not a great movie, "The Great Conspiracy of Careful Eyes" is still a sharp, clear-cut comedy with a simple story and appropriate humor. Fortunately, this not-so-wonderful film is only 90 minutes long, but Kasowitz himself is disappointed with the film: "God, I don't want this to be my last work, otherwise everyone will know about this failure." 」 After this, Kasowitz planned to make a sequel to "The Lady of Gloria" and work with Sean Penn on a new film, but "The Great Conspiracy of Careful Eyes" did become a directorial legacy of Kasowitz. Less than three years after the film's release, Kasowitz passed away. The project with Sean Penn was eventually renamed by his son Nick Kasowitz to She's So Lovely (1997).
Poster of "Lovely Children"
Falk and everyone else say that love is a necessity for Kasowitz, so his characters also crave love. Because of this connection, Kasowitz was able to convey his love to others, especially his kind, with his works in a gesture of understanding. "His art is ultimately an empathy," Carney argues, "not as a bystander who sneers at them, he goes inside people and tries to understand them." He saw and celebrated human flaws, and he realized that everyone experienced emotional and psychological fluctuations like this.
The characters in his films are full of confusion, argument, and difficult to understand, but they are passionate in any case, and like Kasowitz himself, they show a love and vitality for life.
The excavation and presentation of the individual at multiple levels will obscure the sense of morality, reverse social customs and ethical norms, and make the audience lack a sense of identity and difficult to understand. Normal life is crazy, and in this madness, Kasowitz discovers the commonality of people. In the midst of the chaos, he found a common sense of compassion and a need for love, "You can trust my character in the movie. Whoever they are – they're usually not friendly – at least they're frank. ”
Kasowitz also thinks that the differences between men and women and the confrontation between the sexes are interesting. It is difficult for us to define love, and the process of expressing love and finding love, although equally arduous, is worth our efforts. There are bound to be failures in the process — broken feelings, career frustrations, poor communication, disappointment with humanity — and that's exactly what Kasowitz fought. "In my opinion, a love story is about two people together, going through hardships and pains because they love each other." He said, "My films are always about private things — marriages dissolved, lovers betraying each other, two people living together having trouble communicating. ”
During filming, Kasowitz sometimes communicates with actors, but he rarely instructs actors on what to do, preferring to let the drama unfold as actors dig into their roles. According to Fine, Kasowitz's direction of actors "focuses on the mastery of speed and the rhythm of the performance, not on how to play the role and how the tone should be." ”
His films are the films of his actors, and his first consideration is to highlight the performances of the actors. So there's a delicate balance between directing the performance and giving the actors free room to perform, and there's also a need for dexterous flexibility between highlighting the scene setting and hiding the camera's presence.
He let the actors improvise, not caring whether the radio was complete or not, whether the movements in the image were clear. Kasowitz's actors were given the freedom to perform and the trust of the director.
He himself immerses himself in the role when performing and decides for himself how the role should be performed, and he allows his actors to dominate his role. "I often stir up emotions in actors, but I don't instruct them on how to express them." Kasowitz said, "I can't step in. Every time I asked them to play according to my instructions, it always didn't work well. "He didn't neglect the responsibility of the director, he would mediate when there was a problem on the set and change the script as the shoot progressed. For Kasowitz, Fine says, acting "is the search for unexpected spontaneity, the contingency that triggers surprises and real feelings." Acting is a process of self-exploration. "Be true to yourself." Kasowitz suggested.
Kasowitz emphasized that cinema has two seemingly contradictory dual essences: technocraticism and naturalism. He does not follow the common sense of past films, while being wary of aesthetic conventions and clichés.
Kasowitz has a visual intuition, and he often holds a camera to know how an actor will appear in the camera the next second. The resulting material is not the most ideal and effective, but this approach makes Kasowitz's images always extremely vivid – the process of acting and directing is naturally unified. Out-of-focus shots, as well as moving shots that challenge the boundaries of the frame, and shots that arbitrarily manipulate the relationship between the characters and the environment, even if these shots fill Kasowitz's films, the final effect seems to be more meaningful than what it looks like when it is perfectly arranged.
Kasowitz likes to place the viewer in a state of imbalance and insecurity, so his films "transplant scenes that appear in the middle of a regular film narrative to the beginning or the end," Fine writes. The clear motivation and traditional plot are often irrational and puzzling: "That's why my film is so long, shooting for hours at the beginning and not ending." Kasowitz and his actors played mental games in order to get the desired results, and he treated the audience in a similar way.
He doesn't care how the audience talks about his films, he cares about the instinctive reactions of the audience, for better or worse. "It doesn't matter if the audience likes the film or not, what matters is what they feel." He explained.
Kasowitz has a loyal group of supporters, which is why he has always insisted on creating independently in the face of countless difficulties in his film career. He could endure all the financial, physical and mental torture for the sake of his art, but he never saw himself as a good director. "Directing is a full-time hobby for me. I consider myself an amateur director, and a professional actor. "I think I'll be remembered by the audience, probably as an actor, not a director." ”
Although Kasowitz may be widely known for his roles in Rosemary's Baby (1968) or The Dirty Dozen (1967), his influence on film history did not come only from his roles.
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