So one of the directors who isn’t on that S&S critics’ list that I went through, but who does appear on the directors’ list — three times at that! — is John Cassavetes, and this is the movie of his that appears highest on that list.

It is… intense. Fundamentally, it’s a story about a married couple, right, but like… she’s mentally ill in some pretty clear ways and has difficulty dealing with other people and gets into bad situations — in one early scene, when he can’t make it home for a date night, she goes out and flirts(?) in a really horrifying way at a bar, in a scene that goes on to involve sexual assault.

But that’s kind of a one-off; most of the movie involves her and her husband interacting, which nearly always goes poorly, because if she’s mentally ill in fairly obvious ways, he’s got a lot of issues in ways that maybe coded as normal working-class male behavior back in 1974 when this movie was made, but which tbh are pretty extreme even by those standards — he lashes out in anger at pretty much everyone at the drop of a hat, is super volatile and unpredictable, attacks a coworker, slaps his wife, and so on. (And it’s notable that while she ends up going off to a mental hospital, nobody ever suggests that he should.)

And so every scene kind of starts out in this painful awkwardness that is cringe-inducing to watch, and then — after teasing you that maybe this time things might go okay — they descend into one or more varieties of dysfunction. So it’s not a fun movie, is what I’m saying.

The only thing saving it from being unwatchable melodramatic trash is that… well, it’s really good, I guess. Like, Gena Rowlands’ acting is amazing in its range; Peter Falk is convincing as this gregarious, mercurial guy; and Cassavetes gives the film a kind of low-key hyper-naturalism that undercuts the melodrama by keeping it firmly grounded.

Still and all, even if this movie is objectively very good, I’m in no hurry to rush out and watch more of Cassavetes’ films.