As an in memoriam screening last night, I watched ANOTHER WOMAN, Woody Allen’s 1988 pastiche of Ingmar Bergman movies. The pastiche elements are thick as Allen uses Sven Nykvist as his cinematographer, and Gena Rowlands–best known for her collaborations with John Cassavetes, whose films are sometimes referred to as being in the Bergman tradition–plays the lead.
But as is Allen’s want, he empties out the forms he adopted, and fills them with his own ideas and narrative. Instead of the emotional fireworks/confrontations we encounter in Berman/Cassavetes works, AW is muted, almost placid (save for one scene). The film concerns Marion Post, a philosopher, who has put walls up all of her life, and the respectable, wall-admiring society she has thrived in. When I saw it with my lover at the time, we dubbed the film part of Allen’s Beige Period, which began with HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, and increased through his next films, with SEPTEMBER being especially beige. But here the muted tones are more than luxury porn (a frequent charge lobbed at Allen). They are a visual correlative of the conformity of the subculture Marion Post inhabits and excels in. Group costuming/set design presages group think.
Unusual for an Allen film, we hear and see Marion before the credit sequence (so Bondian), and unusual for Rowlands, she is a composed, measured, even-toned presence. In a daring (or foolish, depending on one’s perspective) act of casting against type, Allen has Rowlands be the calm center of his film–all suppressed emotions and accepted regrets.
Marion’s inner turmoil comes at her from both the outside world–therapist conversations seeping through the walls, chance encounters with messy pasts on Greenwich Village streets–and from her inside world via dreams. But even in these scenes, Rowlands shows restraint, as Marion engages regret and accomplishment with an alarming evenhandedness.
Rowlands is superb in her portrayal–and Allen’s use of the close-up is, well, Bergmanesque. Fortunately he has Rowlands, and a supporting cast, that helps him pull this off. He wisely did not work with Carlo Di Palma, who had become his go-to cinematographer, for this film. Rowlands’ face is a landscape that Nykvist carefully and lovingly lights and explores, documenting every nuance Rowlands offers up.
The sole emotionally volatile scene is handled brilliantly by Allen through a coup de cinema that needs to be seen before read about, and the equilibrium of the final shot–regrets addressed, new paths embarked upon (maybe)–leaves viewers with the question whether this is a new path, or, instead, a reassertion of the old status quo, newly fitted out. Rowlands plays it with a delicacy and nuance that allows one to go either way, which is a fitting close to this gossamer film.
Gena Rowlands–volatile, restrained, and everything in between–was a master of the art of screen acting.
