Gloria (1980) Cassavetes' New York Jazz Noir

Written and excellently Directed by John Cassavetes. 

Cassavetes, an actor as well as a director, also directed (Shadows, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie, Too Late Blues and others), as an actor, well know for Noir TV's Johnny Staccato TV Series, The Killing (1964), Mikey And Nicky). 

Beautiful Noir Cinematography by Fred Schuler (Dog Day Afternoon, Wise Guys). A great Jazz score by Bill Conti (I, The Jury).

The film stars Gena Rowlands (Lonely Are The Brave, Tony Rome, Machine Gun McCain, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, Night on Earth) as Gloria Swenson and John Adames as Phil Dawn, They are in majority of scenes.

Gena Rowlands as Gloria Swenson

John Adames as Phil Dawn

The rest of the supporting cast are Julie Carmen (The Milagro Beanfield War) as Jeri Dawn, Buck Henry (The Graduate, Eating Raoul)  as Jack Dawn, Lupe Garnica as Margarita Vargas, John Finnegan as Frank, Tom Noonan, J.C. Quinn, and Sonny Landham as Mob Henchmen, Lawrence Tierney (Born To Kill, The Devil Thumb's a Ride, Dillinger, Hoodlum, Reservoir Dogs) in a cameo as The Broadway Bartender, and New York City circa 1979-80. 

We get the first strains of a Spanish Guitar piece in the darkness. We see the old Columbia Pictures logo of a woman holding holding aloft a sparkling torch, Liberty like. A zoom to the torch to brilliant white. A zoom out to the new logo a stylized sun rising over a horizon. 

Fade out to a wall of art. The title is in amongst the watercolor paintings. Gloria - Gena Rowlands. A quick zoom to various close ups of the art of Romare Bearden.

We get various credits appearing on different watercolors. As all this is happening the Spanish Guitar and the soulful cante flamenco is answered by a sax and this back and forth transforms into a jazz sax lament that comprises Bill Conti's the main title piece. We transition from a watercolor skylines to an aerial view of a twilight New York City over the East River, over Lower New York Harbor including a slow spiral fly by the Statue Of Liberty. 

Cut to the Harlem River and a night game Yankee Stadium. One sequence is looking Southeast over Lower Manhattan with the just seven year old Twin Towers, it's chilling. 

The opening aerial sequence continues, now in daylight. We are in the Bronx. 161st Street. We zoom over Yankee Stadium to a NYC transit GMC "fishbowl" bus crossing the Macomb's Dam Bridge, over the Harlem River. The bus carries Jeri Dawn with her two wheeled shopping cart. She gets off at Grand Concourse and wheels her groceries into her apartment building. 

GMC "fishbowl" bus 

Julie Carmen as Jeri Dawn

The bus carries Jeri Dawn with her two wheeled shopping cart. She gets off at Grand Concourse and wheels her groceries into her apartment building.

Inside the building in the foyer, is a strange man she's never seen before wearing a pattern shirt standing near the top of the stairway.  

The tension builds as the man backs up the stairway ominously, as Jeri climbs up with her cart. She has to pass around him and then walk across the lobby to the elevators. 

You're expecting from all of her reactions that something bad is happening. So tension builds as she gets into the car and pushes the button for her floor. A trap, until the doors slide shut. 

Up in her apartment her husband Jack Dawn is freaking out. He was an accountant for the mob who also kept a diary.

He made the mistake of saying he had wrote something down, out loud, and the mobsters get suspicious, and discover he's been skimming money and informing to the FBI wasn't going to save him fast enough.

There's a contract out on Jack and his whole family. When Jeri informs Jack about the wise guy down in the lobby. He orders everyone to get ready to leave. The whole family consists of his wife, her mother, two daughters and Phil, Jack's only son. They start to gather their clothes. 

There's a knock on the door. Phill grabs a gun. He tells Jeri to answer, while he has his revolver aimed at the door. False alarm it's only the neighbor down the hall Gloria. Jeri pulls her in. She wants to borrow some coffee.

When Gloria sees the gun she asks what's going on. Jeri tells Gloria about Jack and informing on the mob. Jeri asks Gloria to take Phil with her. Gloria tells Jeri she doesn't like kids. Jeri replies that the wise guys are already in the lobby.

You know I don't like kids...

So Gloria takes Phil. Before he goes Jack gives Phil the diary, and tells him that its worth a lot, and that he's the man in the family now. 

Meanwhile, the mob goes into action, blocking off exits and climbing the stairway with a set of automatic shotguns.

Gloria has to practically drag Phil to her apartment. he just doesn't listen. 

When they get there Gloria shows Phil her cat trying to get his mind off of his family. Phil asks to call his father on the phone and they are talking when the mob breaks into the apartment. 

We hear a gunshot. From the window we see another shotgun  blow out a window in a shower of glass and an orange muzzle blast, in Jack and Jeri's apartment.

Gloria starts packing some clothes into her bag and we are somewhat surprised when she grabs a nickel plated Smith & Wesson Model 60 .38 Special, and sticks that in her handbag. Gloria is more than she at first seems.

She heads down the hall dragging Phil to the stairway. Meanwhile the wise guys are quickly tossing the apartment looking for the diary among the bodies before the police show up. 

Police sirens are heard. The mob is long gone by the time Gloria and Phil get down the stairway to the lobby. Gloria gets Phil out through the cordon of police, but gets her and Phil's photo snapped by a news hound photographer while doing so. 

She whisks Phil down the street, and into a Checker cab. We get a great New York City montage of the Checker traveling the city streets and bridges here. She goes to her sisters apartment. To lay low and make plans.

Watching the news on TV Gloria hears the latest on the Dawn family mob killing and the abduction of Phil Dawn by a woman identified as Gloria Swenson. Shit. 

Gloria knows that they got to leave the apartment now. She was a former mob gal pal and they know that she has a sister. They will be by. 

Sure enough they barely get out of the apartment and onto the stairway when some of the wise guys show up in the elevator. She manages to avoid the one checking the stairway and heads down to the basement and out the back way.

I am the man!

She manages to avoid the one checking the stairway and heads down to the basement and out the back way.

Out on the sidewalk Gloria tries to hail a cab, no luck. She starts having second thoughts about Phil. She tries to run him off, telling him to find some of his relatives. 

But he runs back to her wrapping his arms around waist.. But it's too late. A Datsun 810 comes screaming down the asphalt, and squealing around the corner and screeches to a stop out in the street opposite Gloria.

The wise guys tell Gloria to stay out of it. She tells them that the kid knows nothing, it doesn't matter they are whacking the kid. 

It all goes Noirsville when the back door starts to open and Gloria in a "mother grizzly protecting her cub" mode pulls out the nickel plated .38 and starts blasting away with deadly precision, shooting the two goons in the back seat. 

This of course panics the two in the front. The car peels out and down the road. 

Gloria steps out into the street popping away at the two remaining wise guys. In, Dirty Harry Style, she hits both the driver and the passenger. 

The Datsun smacks into a parked car and flips over, if any are still alive they ain't going any where fast. Gloria coolly hails another Checker and pulls Phil into it and they head off to Gloria's bank to grab her money and skip town. 

From here all well staged  a cat and "mouses" type confrontation and chase sequences around New York City.

Noirsville

Lawrence Tierney

Cassavetes crafted a great looking Neo Noir capturing New York City in beautiful Noir Style, complimented by a great Conti score. 

Gloria is your iconic, increasingly alienated Noir character, increasingly becoming obsessed with escaping from danger and at the same time, for some one who early on stated the she "hated kids" instinctively becoming obsessed with motherhood and what it entails. 

We even have two endings. A real Noir one, and then just like in the Classic Hollywood Era's the Hollywood ending. I don't know enough about the production to say if it was intended this way or if it was a commercial decision. Entertaining and a glimpse back to 1979-80 NYC.  8/10