Another Woman **** (1988, Gena Rowlands, Mia Farrow, Ian Holm, Blythe Danner, Gene Hackman, Betty Buckley, John Houseman, Sandy Dennis, David Ogden Stiers, Philip Bosco, Harris Yulin) – Classic Movie Review 6,466

Gena Rowlands is superb as a middle-aged college professor reassessing her life, in Woody Allen’s 1988 serious relationships drama film Another Woman.

Writer-director Woody Allen’s 1988 serious relationships drama film Another Woman stars Gena Rowlands who is superb as Marion Post, a New York college philosophy professor just turned 50 reassessing her life when she accidentally overhears a pregnant woman called Hope (Mia Farrow) in private analysis in the neighbouring psychiatrist’s office.

On a leave from work to write a book, she sublets a furnished apartment downtown for peace and quiet. But instead, she is interrupted by voices from a the neighbouring office where a therapist conducts his analysis.

Marion finds something personal to her in the stranger’s regrets and despair, beginning to realise that she has been unfair and unkind to the people around her, just like her father (John Houseman). After her first husband Sam (Philip Bosco) committed suicide, Marion is recently remarried to Ken (Ian Holm), and though she thinks she has a good relationship with her step-daughter Laura (Martha Plimpton), she resents Marion’s high-handed attitudes. Marion comes to realise her marriage to Ken is unfulfilling and that she missed her one chance at love with his best friend, Larry Lewis (Gene Hackman).

This is a remarkable, impressively serious-minded, character-driven drama from Allen, with an immaculate cast on the right, top form to make it work. Typically of Allen’s films of this era, it focuses mainly on upper middle class intellectual Americans, has a New York City setting, with only a few scenes shot in the Hamptons, and uses classical music for its soundtrack (Erik Satie, Bach). However there are also Jerome Kern’s Lovely to Look At, A Fine Romance and Make Believe, Cole Porter’s You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To, Lee S Roberts’s Smiles, and Jimmy McHugh’s On the Sunny Side of the Street.

All this in just 77 minutes, which makes it one of Allen’s shortest films.

It is a total success artistically but unfortunately it was not a hit thanks to the wider public not taking to Allen being in gloomy, sombre, introspective Ingmar Bergman-style mood. It even uses some story elements from Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957), with Marion in a similar situation to its main character Professor Isak Borg, as well as Bergman’s cinematographer Sven Nykvist. And there is no Allen acting role to help lighten things up and to promote box-office appeal. It cost $10 million and grossed only $1.5 million in the US. That must have added to bold but troubled Orion Pictures’ financial worries at the time.

Also in the superlative cast are Blythe Danner as Lydia, Gene Hackman as Larry Lewis, Betty Buckley as Kathy, John Houseman (in his final film) as Marion’s Father, Sandy Dennis as Claire, Frances Conroy as Lynn, David Ogden Stiers as Young Marion’s Father, Philip Bosco as Sam, and Harris Yulin  as Paul.

Allen turns in a posh looking film, thanks to the cinematography by Sven Nykvist and production designs by Santo Loquasto. It is produced by Jack Rollins, Charles H Joffe and Robert Greenhut. It is the first of four collaborations between Allen and Bergman’s regular cinematographer Nykvist.

Allen recalled the scenes between Rowlands and Hackman, particularly in the flashback of the party, are ‘electrifying’. He says Marion is the character in all his films who most resembles him intellectually.

It followed another Allen-made serious drama September (1987), in which he also did not appear, and which also flopped at the box office.

Farrow was to play Marion, but she was pregnant with Ronan Farrow. Dianne Wiest was to play Hope, but withdrew through illness. It is Farrow’s eighth of 13 movies with Allen.

The cast

The cast are Gena Rowlands as Marion Post, Mia Farrow as Hope, Ian Holm as Ken Post, Blythe Danner as Lydia, Betty Buckley as Kathy, John Houseman as Marion’s Father, Sandy Dennis as Claire, Frances Conroy as Lynn, Philip Bosco as Sam, Martha Plimpton as Laura, Harris Yulin as Paul, Gene Hackman as Larry Lewis, and David Ogden Stiers as Young Marion’s Father.

David Ogden Stiers (1942–2018).

RIP David Odgen Stiers, fondly remembered as Major Charles Winchester in TV’s M*A*S*H, who died on 3 March 2018, aged 75, after a battle with bladder cancer. He voiced many animated films, with Lilo & Stitch (2002) his 25th theatrically released Disney animation.

Virginia Cathryn Rowlands (June 19, 1930 – August 14, 2024) is a four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner. Her work with her actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films includes A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980), gaining her Oscar nominations as Best Actress.

She won the Berlin Silver Bear for Best Actress for Opening Night (1977) and is also remembered for Woody Allen’s Another Woman (1988), The Neon Bible (1995) and her son Nick Cassavetes’s film, The Notebook (2004),

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6,466

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