A Woman Under the Influence premiered in 1974, and is a strong telling of the way that women were treating in that day and age. this movie tells us a detailed story of a wife and mother that is seemingly crazy. Mabel spends her days taking care of her 3 children, trying equally to be their mother and friend as she tries to play the games they play and often goes to far. Letting her children do almost anything they want and not having any set disciplinary actions to take when they run all around the house and risk breaking lamps or hurting each other.  She does not stop  playing with her kids even when her husband Nick demands it, and her playful attitude often rolls from her dealings with the children into her dealing with her husband when he brings his co-workers home at 7 in the morning for a spaghetti dinner without so much as even calling to let her know.

Does the playfulness in dealing with her children mean then that she is crazy and should be put into a mental hospital as Nick agrees to do for six months? Could there be more behind her crazy actions? It is my belief that her behavior is actually a direct result of the way she is treated by Nick.  “She (Mabel) looks to him for her identity, insisting that she’ll (be anything) that he wants. Later, he punctuates a horrendous uproar by shouting “Just be yourself! … Miss Rowlands unleashes an extraordinary characterization of a harried anxious creature, who’s convinced that she “makes a jerk” of herself every day.” This said by Nora Sayre in 1974 in regards to the movie. While i believe that Mabel tries her best, it seems as if it is Nick that makes her crazy, he shows up at 7 AM with his whole crew from work and expects her to cook not only for him but for all of them. after making some polite small talk with nick’s co-workers several of them then break out into singing at the dinner table. Mabel is excited for the music and, after the laughter and joy has died down again she tries to revive the situation by asking several of the men to dance with her, when they turn her down she then tries to start the singing up again. Nick’s response is then to explosively scream that she needs to “get her ass down” this said in front of all his co-workers. Mabel then becomes quiet and withdrawn as Nick answers the phone for his mother.

The children then show up to get some school stuff that they forgot and as Mabel is trying to get them back into their grandmother’s car Nick starts playing with the children in his bed and when she tries to get them out of the bed Nick once again stops her from doing what she thought he wanted because he had already told all three children, grandma, and Mabel that he was tired and needed to rest. This scene shows a hippocracy in Nick because he thinks that it is bad for Mabel to want to have fun and sing and dance with his co-workers and and her children but as she tries to do that Nick is telling her to stop and that she needs to calm down. However, he is fine to change his mind in a split second and go from telling the kids and his family that they need to leave him alone to then wanting to play with them and yelling at Mabel because she is trying to get the kids off to school.  Mabel was only trying to help him to get his rest but he himself stepped in the middle and made it impossible for her to be a “good wife and mother.” Mabel goes out of her way to become the perfect wife and mother only to be met by Nick telling her that she has done something wrong or undermining her authority involving the children. Nick himself does not seem to know what he wants from her, telling her to just be herself but when she is herself by jumping around on the couch with the kids or waiting for the kids to get off the school bus nick becomes violent, often threatening to knock her down or smacking her in the face for what she has done that he perceives as wrong. Even after Mabel comes back from the mental hospital, she is playing with the kids and Nick decides that the playing has gone on long enough and because of that they get into a fight and Mabel winds up on the couch, Nick then smacks her, she lands on the floor and Nick then threatens to kill her and the kids for what she has done.

There is an underlying social aspect to this movie which involves how the outside world looks into a family which has a mentally ill person. A plot so thick and hard to portray that you would believe the director had spent a considerable amount of time to make it happen. Cassavetes was assumed to be “an improvisational filmmaker. Not true. He was the writer of his films, but because he based their stories on his own emotional experience, and because his actors were family or friends, his world felt spontaneous. There was never the arc of a plot, but the terror of free-fall. He knew that in life you do not often improvise, but play a character who has been carefully rehearsed for a lifetime.” This said by Roger Ebert, and i completely agree, the film seems to roll together almost as if i am sitting and watching my very own living room. The characters displayed and the acting that is seen through the film is not only a work of art but as well a real life experience for many in the world and i believe it is movies such as this that make it possible to open up communication about an otherwise very difficult situation.  This movie in a lot of ways reminds my of “A Beautiful Mind” which had a huge part in shaping the way that i see mental illnesses and in making it possible for me to find out more information involving mental illnesses and how to handle those we love when dealing with them. these movies are what have shaped our society into what it is and these are the types of movies we need to continue to watch and follow along to when we have so much being shown to us that is to much more negative.