Starring: Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, Fred Draper

Mabel (Gena Rowlands) is a young wife and mother whose increasing mental illness presents a real challenge to her husband Nick (Peter Falk) and their blue collar Italian family. Her madness is subtle; what first appears simply as eccentric and quirky behavior soon delves into increasingly dangerous situations for Mabel. Revealing the range of emotional bursts, it becomes clear in A Woman Under the Influence that Mabel’s actions are a potential danger to her children and that’s when her husband has to make the difficult decision to have her institutionalized.

As with the majority of Cassavetes films, the improvisational style of acting lends a realistic quality and while the instability of the main character remains steady, this method makes the viewer feel as if the film itself could go anywhere. The performances by Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands are nothing short of electrifying. Rowlands is breathtakingly beautiful even in her most painful episodes while Falk’s loving devotion to his wife, even at her ugliest, is palpable. It is unequivocally one of the greatest romances of modern cinema.