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Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Husbands is perhaps Cassavetes' most darkly disorienting work, and probably his most aggressive one: its trio of protagonists interrogates and/or attacks virtually every utterance, every assumption, every active moment and every quiet one, exhausting each other (and possibly us) in their search for a new stable structure - the old structure fell apart after a fourth friend suddenly died. After Harry (Ben Gazzara) gets into a violent fight with his wife, he decides to take off for London - Gus (Cassavetes) and Archie (Peter Falk) tag along; they all set out to find women for the night, and all succeed (the inevitability of this, at least, is one thing the film never questions), but it never feels like conventional coupling will generate much of an answer to anything. The film sees better prospects for renewal within the dynamics of mysteriously-assembled groups, often from using song as a tool for moving past language, to a purer expression of emotion. As with most of Cassavetes' work, the impact is hardly naturalistic, and doesn't necessarily seem like an excavation of "truth" either, but it's an astounding exercise in unbound performance, in traumatic destabilization. And you constantly feel Cassavetes' delight in faces and voices and expressions, particularly it seems in observing English women with their strange accents and turns of phrase. Harry stays in London (defined here solely by its cramped interiors and its rain); Gus and Archie return, if only because they can't figure out how to make a case for doing anything else. "What's he going to do without us?" they ask, but the real question is the opposite one - how they're meant to reconfigure their relationship yet again to accommodate a further loss. But whether they manage it or not, the final moments of Gus returning to his family (played by Cassavetes' real-life children) leave little doubt that they'll be husbands, and fathers, whether or not they're also living out their concept of being men.

The chances are that, if or whenever you hear the name 'Peter Falk', you instantly associate it with the excellent award winning TV detective series, 'Columbo'. If you stretch your mind a bit, you may even recall that he appeared in a couple of films such as 'The Great Race' or 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'. If that's the extent of your knowledge of this actor, then you are missing out on a number of excellent performances, one of which appears in this film. Essentially 'Husbands' covers the unravelling self-confidence of three close friends, who suffer the loss of their close fourth friend, and the plot effectively deals with the subsequent fallout. It is, by turns, humorous, black and difficult to watch at times, but for me, it was a brave attempt to capture this subject on film. John Cassavetes, who not only stars in the film but also directs, was known as a pioneer of American cinema - particularly for using the POV genre - and with films such as this, it's easy to see why. In terms of the main three actors, each brings a depth, but not only that, a true tragi-comedic element, to their characters, which are highly believable. It would be difficult to single one of the main three actors out for particular praise, such is the balance and interplay. Highly recommended, not only for men of a certain age but also for women seeking insight on the mind of men.

There's no doubting the film-making innovation of the pioneer of American independent cinema, John Cassavetes. But if any of his films were to be considered a stain on his CV, it would be Husbands. That is only because his filmography is so highly praised, and Husbands divided the critics between those who hailed it as one of the best films ever made, and those who found the whole experience relentlessly depressing and tediously long. I'm somewhere in the middle, finding the film occasionally dipping into awkward, slightly forced improvisations, while offering some quite distressing and powerful insights into men going through a midlife crisis.After the death of their friend, three middle-aged men - Harry (Ben Gazzara), Gus (Cassavetes) and Archie (Peter Falk) - find it difficult to cope. We follow them over the course of two days, where they drink heavily, play basketball together, and have a boisterous singing contest with friends and family. After returning home from his binge, Harry is thrown out by his wife, and shortly after announces he is flying to London. Seemingly with nothing better to do, Gus and Archie decide to join him, where they indulge is more drinking, gambling, and womanising. Gus finds himself with a much younger woman named Mary (Jenny Runacre), who is wild and unpredictable.In the same vein as Faces (1968), Cassavetes adopts a cinema verite style, while taking the story and characters to almost hyper-reality. This is not quite the world we live in, only it feels like it. It's a more extreme world, where everything is just a little bit more depressing and the inhabitants are always loathsome in one way or another. It's as if Cassavetes wants us to take a real look at ourselves, whoever we are, and be repulsed. Harry, Gus and Archie are despicable, taking no second thoughts when committing adultery, and ultimately being loud, angry and disgusting when in the presence of others. They are also empty, devoid of any real emotion, only finding any real solitude in each other's company.Judging from the title, Cassavetes uses the film to summarise a broad idea as to why men must go through this at some point in their life. The trio are little more than wild children, only with sexual experience, and the camera, as usual, is close, capturing the slightest facial movement, almost to the point of infringement. It's a depressing, brutal experience, where scenes go on for much longer than they should, making us want to get away from these characters. But maybe that's the point, and Cassavetes takes it to the extreme to push his point across. The final scene is certainly worth the wait however, managing to depict a character in one simple close-up as both tragic and pathetic.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

John Cassavetes was a filmmaker who made his independent films in two primary modes: brilliant character-driven masterpieces like Faces, The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night, or interesting character-driven mediocrities with 'moments,' like Shadows, A Woman Under The Influence, and Gloria. His 1970 film, Husbands, however, falls somewhere in between. It's nowhere near a great film, for it is poorly edited and, surprisingly, poorly scripted, most of the time. But, there are certain scenes that are not overly long and utterly pointless. And in these scenes lie the seeds for what could have been a brilliant, if not great, film. As it is, though, the 142 minute DVD version of the film, released by Columbia and Sony Pictures, plays out more like the opening scene of the film that came before it, Faces. That film had an opening scene of drunken revelry and misery of the sort never before committed to celluloid. The difference is that it, for all its greatness and minor flaws, ran only about 20 minutes into that film. Now, extend that scene and try to cobble and sustain a film narrative about seven times its length, and the problems with Husbands becomes obvious. It simply needed the touch of a good editor.Proof of this claim comes, in fact, from the brief final scene of the film where the character played by Cassavetes himself (Gus) returns home after a drunken weekend in London, England, with two other buddies mourning the loss of a fourth pal, to confront his crying daughter and mischievous son in his driveway, as they call on there never seen mom to tell her that daddy is home to take his lumps. This scene is poetic, spare, and filled with realism. By contrast, far too many scenes in Husbands are bloated, overly long, pointless, and prosaic- in the worst sense. The whole film opens with still photos of four fortyish male friends, then cuts to the funeral of one of them, Stu (in the photos portrayed by Cassavetes' wife, Gena Rowlands' real life brother, David Rowlands). Interestingly, the putative main character of the film makes his exit from the film at this point. Another good touch, in fact, is that, save for the wife of Harry (Ben Gazzara)- who works at an advertising agency, in a brief scene of domestic violence, no other wives make an appearance. The two other surviving members of the male quartet are Gus (Cassavetes himself)- a dentist, and Archie (Peter Falk)- profession unknown.No amount of rewatching can exorcise the screenplay's flaws which make this film merely a good and interesting one, rather than a masterpiece. Far too much testosterone in place of intelligence, and a too easy reliance on melodrama over real drama make the film something that a great film never is: soap operatic. A better editing job would have allowed the film to have been shaped into a coherent whole, rather than an often formless mess. The old maxim about films being made or broken in the editing room seems to have been uttered for films like this. Husbands is one of those films that, in a sense, makes one wish for what could have been, but is good enough that what is can satisfy, at least to a point. Beyond the point, though, the sky is how you make it.