John CassavetesFilmography

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies

Synopsis: In 1994, the British Film Institute commissioned a set of films to mark the centenary of the movies. They would trace the history of several national cinemas, and the BFI's choice for interpreting the history of American film fell to director Martin Scorsese, a longtime champion of film history Read More

Hollywood Mavericks

Actors: Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, D.W. Griffith, Erich Von Stroheim

Synopsis: This documentary respectfully interviews a number of important American directors who have in one way or another "bucked the system." It also explores the life and work of earlier American mavericks through the tributes, reflections, and recollections of the first group. Prominent among the living Read More

Big Trouble

Crew: Director

Actors: Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Beverly D'Angelo, Charles Durning, Paul Dooley, Robert Stack

Synopsis: It took nearly two years after its completion for Big Trouble to reach the big screen. Peter Falk and Alan Arkin are respectively cast as a shady wheeler-dealer and an uptight family man. Strapped for the cash necessary to send his son to Yale, Arkin reluctantly enters into a murder scheme with Beverly D'Angelo Read More

I'm Almost Not Crazy: John Cassavetes

Actors: John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel, Menahem Golan

Synopsis: Filmed in 1984, I'm Almost Not Crazy: John Cassavetes was released in 1989, the year of the subject's death. Filmmaker Michael Ventura follows Cassavetes around as the actor/director labors on his final film, Love Streams. This is warts-and-all material; Cassavetes makes no attempt at diplomacy if Read More

Love Streams

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, Diahnne Abbott, Seymour Cassel, Margaret Abbott

Synopsis: In this emotional roller coaster ride, Robert Harmon (John Cassavetes) is a street-wise, sometimes obnoxious writer currently working on a book about the seamier side of buying/selling love, and Sarah Lawson (Gena Rowlands) is an emotive wife and mother struggling through a divorce and custody Read More

Marvin and Tige

Actors: John Cassavetes, Billy Dee Williams, Denise Nicholas, Gibran Brown, Fay Hauser

Synopsis: In this weakly limned melodrama, Marvin (John Cassavetes) is a homeless man who stops the 11-year-old Tige (Gibran Brown) from killing himself one night, and after a bumpy start, the two become as close as a father and son. Tige's real father left him long ago, his mother has just died, and Tige Read More

The Incubus

Actors: John Cassavetes, Kerrie Keane, Helen Hughes, Erin Flannery, Duncan McIntosh

Synopsis: A series of brutal rapes and murders have begun occurring in a small town. Teenager, Tim (Duncan McIntosh), has had horrible dreams and fears he is the murderer, especially since many of his friends have been victims. The town doctor, Sam Cordell (John Cassavetes), and the sheriff, Hank (John Read More

Tempest

Actors: John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Susan Sarandon, Vittorio Gassman, Raul Julia

Synopsis: This comedy is set upon a remote Greek island and is very loosely based on Shakespeare's classic play. The tale centers on a middle-aged New York architect who abandons his wife and moves to the island with his teen-age daughter and his new lover, a Greek singer, in hopes of finding meaning in his Read More

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, John Cassavetes, Christine Lahti, Bob Balaban, Kenneth McMillan

Synopsis: Stepping into the role made famous on Broadway by Tom Conti, Richard Dreyfuss stars as a profoundly handicapped sculptor in Whose Life is it Anyway? Left a quadraplegic after an auto accident, the embittered Dreyfuss feels utterly useless, as both an artist and a human being. He doesn't want his Read More

Gloria

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Gena Rowlands, John Adames, Buck Henry, Julie Carmen, Lupe Garnica

Synopsis: Gloria (Gena Rowlands), a self-involved woman in her forties who was once a mobster's mistress, is asked to look after Philip (Juan Adames), the son of her Mafia-connected Puerto Rican neighbors. This temporary set-up becomes permanent when the neighbors are killed in a mob hit. Philip has in his Read More

Flesh and Blood

Synopsis: Adapted from the novel by Pete Hamill, Flesh and Blood stars Tom Berenger as Bobby Fallon, a street punk who develops into a topnotch boxer while in prison. Upon his release, Bobby is taken under the wing of manager John Cassavetes. Outwardly tough and unmovable, Bobby is tortured with memories of Read More

Brass Target

Actors: Sophia Loren, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn, Patrick McGoohan

Synopsis: What if General George S. Patton didn't die in a car accident, as history tells us, but at the hands of a paid assassin? That's the premise of Brass Target, another in a series of espionage thrillers, like The Eagle Has Landed, that speculates on the fates of real-life figures from World War II. Robert Vaughn Read More

The Fury

Actors: Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, Carrie Snodgress, Charles Durning, Amy Irving, Andrew Stevens

Synopsis: Brian De Palma returns to the mind-blowing potential of telekinesis in the follow-up to his 1976 horror hit Carrie. While vacationing with his psychic son, Robin (Andrew Stevens), and close associate Childress (John Cassavetes), government agent Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) survives a terrorist Read More

Opening Night

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, John Cassavetes, Joan Blondell, Paul Stewart

Synopsis: John Cassavetes' Opening Night stars Gena Rowlands (Mrs. Cassavetes) as end-of-tether Broadway actress Myrtle Gordon. She is about to open in a play written by her old friend Sarah Goode (Joan Blondell), but a series of pre-show setbacks and disasters threaten to destroy not only the production Read More

Mikey and Nicky

Actors: Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned Beatty, Rose Arrick, Carol Grace

Synopsis: Nickey (John Cassavetes) is a small-time Jewish gangster in trouble with the mob. He calls on his lifelong friend Mikey (Peter Falk) for help. During the night the two spend together, the power of their friendship is undermined by their mutual nastiness and pressing financial concerns. Elaine Read More

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ben Gazzara, Timothy Carey, Azizi Johari, Meade Roberts, Seymour Cassel

Synopsis: John Cassavetes takes a contemporary film noir turn (which he would return to in Gloria) after exploring domestic melodrama in A Woman Under the Influence with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vitelli, the owner of a sleazy Los Angeles strip joint, who loses $20,000 Read More

Two-Minute Warning

Actors: Charlton Heston, John Cassavetes, Martin Balsam, Beau Bridges, Marilyn Hassett

Synopsis: Larry Peerce directed this tired disaster movie about a mad sniper loose in a football stadium. At the beginning, the sniper picks off a cyclist for practice and then takes roost in the top tower of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Sent in to stop the terror is Captain Peter Holly (Charlton Heston Read More

Capone

Actors: Ben Gazzara, Susan Blakely, Harry Guardino, John Cassavetes, Sylvester Stallone

Synopsis: Ben Gazzara stars in this low-level depiction of legendary gangster Al Capone, who rose to command the mob underworld in 1920's Chicago. Born in Brooklyn, Capone joins his first gang at the age of 11. From there, he graduates to the infamous "Five Points Gang" run by Johnny Torrio (Harry Read More

A Woman Under the Influence

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk, Matthew Cassel, Matthew Laborteaux, Christina Grisanti

Synopsis: John Cassavetes' harrowing masterpiece charts the emotional meltdown of a suburban housewife and its effects on her blue-collar Italian family. Gena Rowlands stars as Mabel Longhetti, a mother of three whose husband Nick (Peter Falk) works as a construction worker; a mismatched couple like so many Read More

Minnie and Moskowitz

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jack Danskin, Sean Joyce, Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery, Timothy Carey, Katherine Cassavetes

Synopsis: Can a straight-laced woman find happiness with a scruffy hippie who has a bad habit of getting beaten up? Minnie Moore (Gena Rowlands) was a prom queen in high school but has become disillusioned with life now that she is a divorcée who has just turned 40. Her marriage ended badly, and her current Read More

Husbands

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Jenny Runacre, Jenny Wright

Synopsis: John Cassavetes wrote and directed this look at three middle-aged men thrown into a midlife crisis when one of their mutual friends dies. Harry (Ben Gazzara), Archie (Peter Falk) and Gus (John Cassavetes) attend the funeral of their buddy David Rowlands (Stuart Jackson); all three are starting to Read More

Machine Gun McCain

Actors: John Cassavetes, Britt Ekland, Peter Falk, Gabriele Ferzetti, Salvo Randone

Synopsis: Hank McCain (John Cassavetes) is the imprisoned gangster who gets out of jail with the help of the mob. The syndicate wants him to take part in a heist of a Las Vegas casino. The plan is discussed and soon abandoned by the mob, but Hank decides to go ahead with the robbery. Disguised as a Read More

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium

Actors: Suzanne Pleshette, Ian McShane, Mildred Natwick, Murray Hamilton, Sandy Baron

Synopsis: A mid-1960s TV documentary special (and a New Yorker cartoon before that) was the inspiration for If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. The film is a likeable satire of "packaged" European tours, where the nonplused tourists are expected to rush from one landmark to another in a breathless 18 Read More

Rome Like Chicago

Faces

Crew: Director, Editor, Screenwriter

Actors: John Marley, Gena Rowlands, Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassel

Synopsis: Faces is right: this definitive John Cassavetes film consists almost exclusively of tight, uncomfortable close-ups. It takes place in the fourteenth year of the marriage of Richard (John Marley) and Maria (Lynn Carlin). Neither husband nor wife is content with the conditions that prevail; Maria Read More

Rosemary's Baby

Actors: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans

Synopsis: In Roman Polanski's first American film, adapted from Ira Levin's horror bestseller, a young wife comes to believe that her offspring is not of this world. Waifish Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), move into the Bramford, an old New York City Read More

The Dirty Dozen

Actors: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy, Richard Jaeckel

Synopsis: Director Robert Aldrich took what he considered a hopelessly old-fashioned script by Lukas Heller and Nunnally Johnson and fashioned The Dirty Dozen into one of MGM's biggest moneymakers of the 1960s--and the sixth highest-grossing film in the studio's history. Lee Marvin plays Major Reisman Read More

Devil's Angels

Actors: John Cassavetes, Beverly Adams, Mimsy Farmer, Maurice McEndree, Salli Sachse

Synopsis: Big bad bikers butt heads with a small-town sheriff in this bargain-basement sleaze-fest. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Combat!: S.I.W.

Synopsis: John Cassavetes guest stars as Pvt. Kalb, newest member of King Company. Saunders (Vic Morrow) is none too happy with the arrival of Kalb, who has a reputation for goldbricking and cowardice--and who may or may not have been responsible for the decimation of the two previous squads to which he'd Read More

Profiles in Courage: John Peter Altgeld

Actors: Burgess Meredith

The Killers

Actors: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Ronald Reagan, Clu Gulager

Synopsis: Don Siegel directed this intensely pessimistic re-make of Robert Siodmak's 1946 film noir masterpiece The Killers, based upon a story by Ernest Hemingway. As the story opens two professional looking men in business suits -- Charlie (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Gulager) -- push their way into a school Read More

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Water's Edge

Actors: Ann Sothern, John Cassavetes, Rayford Barnes, J.B. Brown, David Fresco

Synopsis: The moment he is sprung from prison, smooth-talking Rusty Connors (John Cassavetes) pays a visit to Helen Krause (Ann Sothern), the dowdy widow of Rusty's late cellmate Miles Krause. It seems that Krause had hidden a huge amount of money before he was arrested, and Rusty hopes to persuade Helen to Read More

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Murder Case

Actors: John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Murray Matheson, Ben Wright, Brendan Dillon

Synopsis: This episode marks a rare joint appearance by John Cassavetes and his wife, Gena Rowlands. Married to Charles Justin (Murray Matheson), an elderly diamond merchant, young Diana Justin (Rowlands) decides to finance a stage play with her husband's money -- and hires an ex-lover of hers, actor Lee Read More

Alexander the Great

Synopsis: One of the most famous of unsold TV pilots, Alexander the Great stars William Shatner in the title role. Nine months in the making, this lavish 60-minute drama recreates the battle between the Greeks and Persians at Issus (filmed near St. George, Utah). Hoping to attract as wide an audience as Read More

A Child Is Waiting

Crew: Director

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Gena Rowlands, Steven Hill, Bruce Ritchey

Synopsis: Produced by Stanley Kramer, A Child is Waiting is set in an institution for the mentally handicapped, with many actual residents playing supporting and bit roles. Doctor Burt Lancaster and instructor Judy Garland often find themselves at odds over teaching methods, with Garland preferring an Read More

The Webster Boy

Actors: John Cassavetes, Elizabeth Sellars, David Farrar, Richard O'Sullivan, Niall MacGinnis

Synopsis: The Webster Boy is a case of a weak script and strong actors combining for a mediocre tale about a love triangle. John Cassavetes is Vance Miller, an American with a serious gambling addiction who is just through with serving time and ready to finally go back to England. His objective is to find Read More

Too Late Blues

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Bobby Darin, Stella Stevens, Everett Chambers, Cliff Carnell, Seymour Cassel

Synopsis: After his pioneering independent film Shadows (1960), actor/writer/director John Cassavetes made his major studio directorial debut with this gritty, low-key drama about jazz musicians. Bobby Darin plays John "Ghost" Walefield, a pianist who scuffles from gig to gig with his band, trying to keep Read More

Johnny Staccato [TV Series]

Actors: John Cassavetes, Eduardo Ciannelli

Shadows

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Lelia Goldoni, Ben Carruthers, Anthony Ray, Hugh Hurd, Rupert Crosse

Synopsis: Shadows was John Cassavetes' first directorial effort. Like his later critically acclaimed films Faces and Husbands, Cassavetes fills the screen with probing, unflattering closeups. Unlike his other films, however, Shadows zips along at 87 minutes, avoiding the pitfall of putting the director's Read More

Saddle the Wind

Actors: Robert Taylor, Julie London, John Cassavetes, Donald Crisp, Charles McGraw

Synopsis: Rod Serling's first original screenplay for the Big Screen was the psychological western Saddle the Wind. In one of his best performances, Robert Taylor plays Steve Sinclair, a world-weary gunslinger. Hoping to become a rancher, Sinclair is given a plot of land by patriarchal Dr. Deneen (Donald Crisp Read More

Virgin Island

Actors: John Cassavetes, Virginia Maskell, Sidney Poitier, Isabel Dean, Colin Gordon

Synopsis: Based on Robb White's novel 3DOur Virgin Island3D (the film's original title), this harmless location-filmed comedy boasts an unusually impressive cast. With their combined life savings of $85, fiercely independent archeologist Evan (John Cassavetes) and his wife Tina (Virginia Maskell) purchase Read More

Playhouse 90: Winter Dreams

Actors: Dana Wynter, John Cassavetes, Mildred Dunnock, Joseph Sweeney, Darryl Hickman

Synopsis: F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Winter Dreams" is brought to life in this 1957 Playhouse 90 presentation. John Cassavetes stars as Dexter Green, who has spent most of his life trying to fulfill the ambitions and hopes of his socially ambitious mother and his conservative father. Thanks to his Read More

Affair in Havana

Actors: John Cassavetes, Raymond Burr, Sara Shane, Lilia Lazo, Sergio Pena

Synopsis: In this suspenseful crime drama the trouble begins when the healthy wife of a crippled plantation owner prepares to leave with her handsome lover. Just before she does, her ailing husband tells her that he will only live a few months more, and if she remains with him she will inherit $20 million. Read More

Edge of the City

Actors: John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, Jack Warden, Kathleen Maguire, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: Edge of the City is a modern morality play, acted out in the railyards of New York. AWOL soldier John Cassavetes takes a job as a railroad worker, where he is taunted and bullied by supervisor Jack Warden, a union functionary appointed by the Mob. Cassavetes befriends his African-American Read More

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: You Got to Have Luck

Synopsis: Escaped criminal Sam Cobbett (John Cassavetes) breaks into a remote farmhouse and takes a young woman named Mary Schaffer (Marisa Pavan) hostage. At first, Sam has the upper hand in the situation, but as the night progresses, he becomes unnerved by Mary's peculiar behavior. Especially off-putting Read More

Crime in the Streets

Actors: James Whitmore, John Cassavetes, Sal Mineo, Mark Rydell, Denise Alexander, Virginia Gregg

Synopsis: Frankie Dane (John Cassavetes) is the leader of the hornets, a local street gang that has had its share of rumbles and other trouble with the police. When one of his members is fingered to the police by a neighbor (Malcolm Atterbury) for having a gun, Frankie vows revenge, and when the same man Read More

The Night Holds Terror

Actors: Jack Kelly, Hildy Parks, Vince Edwards, John Cassavetes, David Cross

Synopsis: Though based on a true story, the principal inspiration for The Night Holds Terror was the success of Paramount's The Desperate Hours. Jack Kelly plays well-to-do businessman Gene Courtier, who makes the mistake of his life when he picks up hitchhiker Victor Gosset (Vincent Edwards). Soon Read More

I'll Cry Tomorrow

Actors: Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, Eddie Albert, Jo Van Fleet, Don Taylor

Synopsis: Susan Hayward pulls out all the stops, and then some, in this cinemadaptation of singer Lillian Roth's autobiography I'll Cry Tomorrow. In as harshly realistic a manner as possible in the still censor-dominated Hollywood of 1955, the film recounts Roth's rise to fame, her precipitous fall and her Read More

Taxi

Actors: Dan Dailey, Constance Smith, Neva Patterson, Blanche Yurka

Synopsis: Taxi stars Dan Dailey as Ed Nielson, a been-there-done-that Manhattan cabbie. Nagged by his mother (Blanche Yurka) to find himself a wife, Ed must also contend with a blood-sucking loan company, demanding huge payments for his cab. His life is further complicated when he falls in love with one of Read More