Husbands (1970) [HD]

Complex Comedy
In Ray Carney's new book about Cassavetes he talks about how the director spent
a year re-editing this movie because he thought it was too "entertaining" and
too "funny" in its first version. Ray Carney's Cassavetes on Cassavetes has
hundreds of similar anecdotes by the filmmaker. It's a perfect introduction to
Husbands. It's anything but a simple comedy. The characters are as unpredictable
as real people and the situations as hard to figure out as stuff in real life.
Husbands gets you all mixed up. Are these guys idiots or inspired? Are they
jerks or pursuing a dream? Cassavetes doesn't want it to be too clear or too
easy to understand. He doesn't want us to laugh off the serious questions. He
talks about that in Carney's book, but it's obvious from the film itself. This
film should be required viewing for all men, so maybe they can begin to
understand themselves, and it should be required viewing for all women so that
they...

Rat Pack In Extremis
Three forty-ish professionals and best friends from Long Island go on a week-long bender in the wake of the fourth of their number dying suddenly of a heart attack. They play sports, go on an endless pub crawl, and eventually flee their wives and kids on an impulsive trip to London, where they set about pairing off with younger women. This is a very conventional sounding story, and director John Cassavetes, operating in the wake of the surprise success of his own film Faces and his acting appearences in two of the biggest hits of the late '60's (Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen) got studio backing and stars for Husbands, and shot a two hour mainstream male-bonding comedy that he screened to great success for MGM executives. He turned to co-star Peter Falk during the applause and whispered "Remember that version -- because no-one's ever going to see it again."

He then spent a year making a completely different film in the editing room, taking out all the scenes of a...

pain is good
This is an excruciating, frustrating, painful comedy of men, and amazing in retrospect. Cassavetes was an authentic cinematic genius of American film, regardless of the philistine like comments I've seen in these reviews. What I don't undertand is why they haven't made it available on DVD. Are they restoring it? Are there legal tie-ups? What? I've only ever seen it in pieces on television. I would love to be able to examine fully, without commerical interruption or deletion....

Click to Editorial Reviews