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Editorial Reviews
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Three real-life buddies (John Cassavetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara) team up to play three pals whose lives suffer a shock wave when a fourth friend drops dead. After the funeral, the three friends, feeling death's hot breath on their own necks, take off on a weekend-long debauch, with way too much drinking and loose women. But, in the process, they have lengthy heart-to-hearts about the nature of friendship, manhood, and marriage, among other things. As strong an example of Cassavetes's improvisational art as any of his films, this film may test your patience with his indulgent treatment of actors, allowing them to explore their characters on film. Sometimes they come up empty, but more often, they find precious moments and revelations. And these three guys play off each other like long-time partners in a high-wire game of chicken in which they all emerge as winners. --Marshall Fine
Product Description
Husbands, 1971 Golden Globesr nominee for best screenplay,follows three middle-aged husbands, with wives and houses in the New York suburbs, who go on a wild spree after a close friend dies of a heart attack. Ending up in London, the three must confront their own mortality and decide how to spend the rest of their lives.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
In Ray Carney's new book about Cassavetes he talks about how the director spent
a year re-editing this movie because he thought it was too "entertaining" and
too "funny" in its first version. Ray Carney's Cassavetes on Cassavetes has
hundreds of similar anecdotes by the filmmaker. It's a perfect introduction to
Husbands. It's anything but a simple comedy. The characters are as unpredictable
as real people and the situations as hard to figure out as stuff in real life.
Husbands gets you all mixed up. Are these guys idiots or inspired? Are they
jerks or pursuing a dream? Cassavetes doesn't want it to be too clear or too
easy to understand. He doesn't want us to laugh off the serious questions. He
talks about that in Carney's book, but it's obvious from the film itself. This
film should be required viewing for all men, so maybe they can begin to
understand themselves, and it should be required viewing for all women so that
they can begin to understand the men in their lives. It's!
not an easy thing to understand, which is why Cassavetes doesn't make the movie
easy for us to understand, but the more times you see it, the more you will see.
Read the Carney book too, for more of Cassavetes' amazing insights into men and
women and what he was trying to do in his films.
a year re-editing this movie because he thought it was too "entertaining" and
too "funny" in its first version. Ray Carney's Cassavetes on Cassavetes has
hundreds of similar anecdotes by the filmmaker. It's a perfect introduction to
Husbands. It's anything but a simple comedy. The characters are as unpredictable
as real people and the situations as hard to figure out as stuff in real life.
Husbands gets you all mixed up. Are these guys idiots or inspired? Are they
jerks or pursuing a dream? Cassavetes doesn't want it to be too clear or too
easy to understand. He doesn't want us to laugh off the serious questions. He
talks about that in Carney's book, but it's obvious from the film itself. This
film should be required viewing for all men, so maybe they can begin to
understand themselves, and it should be required viewing for all women so that
they can begin to understand the men in their lives. It's!
not an easy thing to understand, which is why Cassavetes doesn't make the movie
easy for us to understand, but the more times you see it, the more you will see.
Read the Carney book too, for more of Cassavetes' amazing insights into men and
women and what he was trying to do in his films.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Three forty-ish professionals and best friends from Long Island go on a week-long bender in the wake of the fourth of their number dying suddenly of a heart attack. They play sports, go on an endless pub crawl, and eventually flee their wives and kids on an impulsive trip to London, where they set about pairing off with younger women. This is a very conventional sounding story, and director John Cassavetes, operating in the wake of the surprise success of his own film Faces and his acting appearences in two of the biggest hits of the late '60's (Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen) got studio backing and stars for Husbands, and shot a two hour mainstream male-bonding comedy that he screened to great success for MGM executives. He turned to co-star Peter Falk during the applause and whispered "Remember that version -- because no-one's ever going to see it again."
He then spent a year making a completely different film in the editing room, taking out all the scenes of a conventional buddy comedy and putting in all the messy inconclusive momements in between the laughs and the plot points. What we get is three great actors -- Mephistophelian bad boy Cassavetes, wounded idealist Falk, and in a film-stealing performance, glowering kill-joy Ben Gazzara, get to the truth behind the arrested adolescence of male bonding.
"I've never seen a helicopter explode. I've never seen anyone go and blow somebody's head off. So why should I make a film about them? But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest ways." John Cassavetes.
Cassavetes, even after his posthumous reputation has flourished as the very model of the off-Hollywood maverick independent film-maker, remains a polarizing figure to this day, and likely always will. His messy, plotless, chaotic, grueling actor-centered cinema aimed to present a narrow band of human emotions and a narrow strata of society in deliberately unflattering close-up. They are as exhausting to watch as they must have been to make (a typical Cassavetes film took a year to write, a year to shoot, and a year to edit). Critics accused the films' faux improvised scripts, picking at small agonizing personal interactions like scabs for seemingly endless duration, as being no more than acting class exercises run self-indulgently amok: this is actually true, but this is also the source of JC's greatest insight. Cassavetes understood that social conditioning turns all of us into actors, forced to don a mask or pose to enact the various roles we are compelled to perform throughout our days, and that we are generally very bad actors to boot, full of forced laughter, cruel acts impulsively cracking the facade of niceness, self-pity undermining our cool. The moments in our lives where the mask starts to slip because our social performance has ceased to properly achieve what it was supposed to and we start blowing our lines because we don't actually understand why we are doing whatever it is we're doing are the moments his films are about. That is why they are so truthful and so painful to watch, not because of the sputtering inarticulateness of his characters, and meandering plots, the bad lighting and un-composed shots. Husbands is his toughest, most exhausting film, but if you can take it, it's worth the ride.
What always saves a Cassavetes film from the precipice is that by the time the credits roll, we know his people as we know our own loved ones -- flawed, complex, mysterious. His compassion is like a tidal wave, but without a hint of sentiment. The film is also funny as hell, without a single line that resembles a joke.
Cassavetes was the son of self-made Greek immigrants, and I have always found that significant: all those great Greek works that are thrown around so easily in our lexicon now apply to him: tyrant, democrat, anarchist, demogogue, autodidact, tragedian, comedian, daemon. He was all of these things, and ranks as one of the most important, if difficult of American film-makers.
He then spent a year making a completely different film in the editing room, taking out all the scenes of a conventional buddy comedy and putting in all the messy inconclusive momements in between the laughs and the plot points. What we get is three great actors -- Mephistophelian bad boy Cassavetes, wounded idealist Falk, and in a film-stealing performance, glowering kill-joy Ben Gazzara, get to the truth behind the arrested adolescence of male bonding.
"I've never seen a helicopter explode. I've never seen anyone go and blow somebody's head off. So why should I make a film about them? But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest ways." John Cassavetes.
Cassavetes, even after his posthumous reputation has flourished as the very model of the off-Hollywood maverick independent film-maker, remains a polarizing figure to this day, and likely always will. His messy, plotless, chaotic, grueling actor-centered cinema aimed to present a narrow band of human emotions and a narrow strata of society in deliberately unflattering close-up. They are as exhausting to watch as they must have been to make (a typical Cassavetes film took a year to write, a year to shoot, and a year to edit). Critics accused the films' faux improvised scripts, picking at small agonizing personal interactions like scabs for seemingly endless duration, as being no more than acting class exercises run self-indulgently amok: this is actually true, but this is also the source of JC's greatest insight. Cassavetes understood that social conditioning turns all of us into actors, forced to don a mask or pose to enact the various roles we are compelled to perform throughout our days, and that we are generally very bad actors to boot, full of forced laughter, cruel acts impulsively cracking the facade of niceness, self-pity undermining our cool. The moments in our lives where the mask starts to slip because our social performance has ceased to properly achieve what it was supposed to and we start blowing our lines because we don't actually understand why we are doing whatever it is we're doing are the moments his films are about. That is why they are so truthful and so painful to watch, not because of the sputtering inarticulateness of his characters, and meandering plots, the bad lighting and un-composed shots. Husbands is his toughest, most exhausting film, but if you can take it, it's worth the ride.
What always saves a Cassavetes film from the precipice is that by the time the credits roll, we know his people as we know our own loved ones -- flawed, complex, mysterious. His compassion is like a tidal wave, but without a hint of sentiment. The film is also funny as hell, without a single line that resembles a joke.
Cassavetes was the son of self-made Greek immigrants, and I have always found that significant: all those great Greek works that are thrown around so easily in our lexicon now apply to him: tyrant, democrat, anarchist, demogogue, autodidact, tragedian, comedian, daemon. He was all of these things, and ranks as one of the most important, if difficult of American film-makers.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
This is an excruciating, frustrating, painful comedy of men, and amazing in retrospect. Cassavetes was an authentic cinematic genius of American film, regardless of the philistine like comments I've seen in these reviews. What I don't undertand is why they haven't made it available on DVD. Are they restoring it? Are there legal tie-ups? What? I've only ever seen it in pieces on television. I would love to be able to examine fully, without commerical interruption or deletion....
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Bold
3 old pals grieving death of "leader" of their circle in 1970 remains remarkably free of convention or cliche. Read more
Published 1 month ago by mr. critic
"Husbands",having a laugh....
Not one of Cassavetes more enjoyable films,but worth while for his fans,with minimal plot,
John and his pals Gazzara and Falks improvising a fair deal,just messing about... Read more
John and his pals Gazzara and Falks improvising a fair deal,just messing about... Read more
Published 15 months ago by easyandy
Some good sequences; just drags on too long
It's not that I can't handle a long movie; it's that this particular movie has scenes that are longer than they need to be, and it feels as if they will never end. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Viva
FINALLY!
I am so happy to see this UNcut version FINALLY on DVD, it's been a long time coming. I rushed home from college to see this movie for the 1st time on Bravo (when Bravo was... Read more
Published on November 11, 2009 by J. M. Davis
Cassavetes Classic
This is my favorite film by far from Cassavetes. I'm so happy this film is now available. It is a must have for real film fans and Cassavetes fans. I love it!
Published on September 29, 2009 by Adam Ballard
Deserved a Criterion Release
I give this film 5 stars because it is a magnificent film: funny, sad, frustrating, annoying, self-indulgent, often overdone. Yet it is Life itself. Read more
Published on August 23, 2009 by Richard Masloski
HUSBANDS - The Extended Cut
To set the record straight about the running time of the long-awaited DVD release of John Cassavetes' "Husbands," Sony's own website and press release announce this as "The... Read more
Published on July 6, 2009 by Steven Baker
What's Truncated from the upcoming release?
I found this film, my favorite of Cassavetes, through an independent collector. Actually, there are two versions that I have, each different and ranging from 131 minutes to 138... Read more
Published on July 5, 2009 by Curtis Fry
Still Truncated
According to the DVD running time listed above, the soon-to-be released "Husbands," John Cassavetes' best film, has still not been restored to its original theatrical release... Read more
Published on July 5, 2009 by Jeffrey Lipsky
terrific movie for terrific husbands
do you love cassavetes movie?SO it s a movie about life death and freedom
like all cassavetes movie and you feel it, you smell, you live...
WONDERFUL way of life
like all cassavetes movie and you feel it, you smell, you live...
WONDERFUL way of life
Published on May 24, 2009 by Raffini
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