MovieChat Forums > A Woman Under the Influence (1974) Discussion > I thought Gena Rowlands was supposed to ...

I thought Gena Rowlands was supposed to be the crazy one?


its the rest of them that are crazy,.... so far anyway i'm only halfway through but Falk and his crazy mum are driving Me up the wall already!

reply

...and so it remains for the rest of the film, her and her children are the sympathetic characters, the rest are either meek, weak, malignant, or have anger issues to say the least.

All of this is interesting and it is a great film, but what annoyed me and ruined my enjoyment was that in preface to watching the film I read the synopsis found on the imdb page,

'Mabel, a wife and mother, is loved by her husband Nick but her madness proves to be a problem in the marriage. The film transpires to a positive role of madness in the family, challenging conventional representations of madness in cinema.



for one thing, she is not mad and secondly what is this about 'a positive role of madness in the family'....What? So, the Peter Falk character, who is one of the actually 'mad' ones, when he hits his wife that is positive? When he, his 'crazy' mum and geriatric quack have his wife committed for no good reason... the reason being that she 'made' him punch a complete stranger???????

so where is this 'positive' role of madness in the family

the synopsis must be referring to her; she is a good mother, loving and a nice person...... but she is not mad! She is maybe driven to delirium and a confused stupor due to pharmaceutical medicine and electrotherapy, but she's not the mad one!!! that's the whole point of the film!!!!!!

so how can you say in summary that this film shows the Positive role of madness in the family? Madness only brought violence and forced removal of the mother, who it seems nobody even went to visit for 6 months!!!! ARRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHH

reply

So, the Peter Falk character, who is one of the actually 'mad' ones, when he hits his wife that is positive? When he, his 'crazy' mum and geriatric quack have his wife committed for no good reason...

having a domineering mother has an influence on abusive attitudes in men, as you said, he was the “mad one” not her. Mabel was a very vulnerable, sensitive and delicate woman.

☁☀☁

------__@
----_`\<,_
___(*)/ (*)____
» nec spe,nec metu •´¯`» 'O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.

reply

I completely agree. So, for that matter, did Cassavetes; if you read interviews with him about this movie, he readily admits that Nick is supposed to be the crazy one. His behavior becomes increasingly mad - like taking the kids out of school to go to the beach and getting them drunk - much more so than anything Mabel does. Not to mention his complete overreaction to the innocent party his wife organized for the children. So she was dancing around - that makes her crazy? And even if she is a little nuts - so what? That is what makes her the beautiful, vibrant person she is, and when they try to take that away from her and make her "normal", Nick becomes very uncomfortable and tells her to be herself. While the title sounds as if Mabel is under the influence of alcohol or drugs, she is actually under the influence of her husband. He is the reason she gets as mixed up as she becomes and the reason she is eventually committed.

reply

It's a very poor synopsis.

reply

Nick and Mabel were both crazy, but in different ways. Mabel was crazier, though. She was Bat S**t crazy!

Boom.





Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.

reply

They were both CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY as were the rest of the family. I am baffled by posters here who are saying things like "she's not mad" or "she wasn't that bad" or "she's just eccentric" or "she's just a free spirit" or "she's a good mother"(!) A good mother doesn't traumatize her children, and Mabel does that over and over and over.

I don't know exactly what her diagnosis would be but she is very very severely mentally ill and it is clear that her hospitalization didn't help at all. Her actions put herself in danger (bringing home a stranger from a bar) and put others in danger (I wouldn't leave my kids with her either; kids running around naked, all the yelling and violence, etc. esp. the end of the movie.)

reply

I'm still not sure if Nick and his mom's craziness was caused by Mabel's or if they were already crazy.

I found myself sympathizing with Nick throughout the movie (obviously excluding the domestic violence). He seemed like he was just trying to make Mabel less crazy and things be normal by trying to get her to calm down/shut-up. Perhaps there are better ways to achieve this but I think Nick's response would have been what most people would have done in his situation.

reply