OPENING
The film opens with musicians jamming on their instruments as a crowd of people dance in a room that can hardly contain them. We see a man trying to make his way through the crowd with his bongos. It looks like he wants to play, but the crowd pushes him all the way into the corner where he let’s go of his instrument and picks up a beer to go with the cigarette dangling from his mouth. Cassavetes shows us how this man has music in him, but he can’t make his way through the crowd in order to play. He then cuts to the streets where the same man, Ben joins his friends as they meet a group of girls in a restaurant. Ben tells the girl he is a musician, and she asks where his instrument is. We are getting to understand that this man is not getting through to people, that they aren’t accepting him initially for who he says he is. This is a rather large theme in this film as Cassavetes is showing us how this man is being marginalized in particular ways in his life. The director builds the physical tension between the male characters and their female counterparts in the restaurant until he abruptly cuts to Ben making his way to see his brother, Hugh who is a musician as well. We see that Hugh, who is a black man is now accepting jobs introducing white floozies with no talent for $35 a night and a third billing. Ben needs $20 from him in the midst of all of this to which Hugh gives to his little brother.
We are next introduced to Hugh’s sister, Lelia as he is getting ready to leave on a bus for Philadelphia to play his show. She’s twenty and Hugh is concerned for her safety and asks that she take a cab home instead of walking. She doesn’t, she walks and ends up getting harassed by a man outside of a movie theatre. Cassavetes shows us this to reveal character as his pictures are all character driven. He is concerned with the emotional experience and the choices that people make and the outcomes they have. We’re also shown this in the next sequence when Hugh begins to sing at the nightclub in Philadelphia. The entire time we’ve heard him talking about how he is a singer, how ten years before he was an artist, and when he goes on to sing noone cares. They’re not interested. Hugh isn’t even given the chance to introduce the floozies, and what’s worse the audience applauds the girls coming on, not because of their talent, but because they are something to look at. Cassavetes is making a statement about art here, that people want to be entertained. They don’t need are thy want to feel good. Whether this is right or wrong is subjective, but Cassavetes presents the argument and allows us to feel for Hugh, but also to experience wanting him to be taken off the stage. This is done by Cassavetes using multiple cuts showing the audience ignoring Hugh and talking with each other. As we take a look at the people’s opinions of him it’s hard not to have our own opinions skew as well.
Back in New York Ben, Lelia and the guys are in a diner. David, the man she’s seeing tries to convince the guys to do something, to go out and explore New York and all it has to offer. He suggests a literary meeting or a museum. The guys laugh, but Ben goes to The Met and they follow. We hear Tom raving about the intellectual types, the “teachers” that all they do is spout off information about things they couldn’t do themselves. Cassavetes allows the characters to progress the story and this is an example of it. He wants to have the character’s experience on full display, that their thoughts and feelings are what drives the film forward and give it it’s core, and Tom’s rant here reveals a deeper understanding of why these young men are the way they are. Why they choose to resist the formal structures of education, art and living. It shows us that they want to break away. All of this happens while Ben is captivated by a statue and feels something. This juxtaposes Tom’s beliefs and shows us that even rebels of a generation connect to art and its meaning. They are able to go beyond the structures that contain the art and find value in the work itself.
LITERARY and LIFE
We find Lelia arguing with David as he has just criticized her writing in front of a group of people at a literary party. Shortly after a young man, Tony is introduced to Lelia by David. David tells Tony Lelia’s story she’s written about a woman who kisses a stranger on a Sunday afternoon. To exemplify her story Lelia kisses Tony in front of David and the next day they all go to the park together, but Tony and Lelia ditch David to go back to his apartment. Tony is quite forward about wanting to sleep with her and they go up to his apartment where he tells her he loves her and they have sex. We learn that Lelia was a virgin. In the scene that follows Cassavetes shows us how the sexual liberation and exploration of the Beat Generation doesn’t produce the kind of closeness that everyone expects it to. Lelia’s first time was nothing like she imagined and she doesn’t want to be with Tony. We see that he persists to try to take care of her more out of guilt than out of true affection for the young girl as he takes her home.
In her apartment Ben, Tony and Dennis call up the three women that they met in the restaurant before leaving Lelia and Tony to meet them. Cassavetes shows Lelia and Tony dancing together to slow and beautiful music. We are able to see that Tony is trying to connect more deeply now with Lelia after their sexual experience, but when Hugh and Rupert return from Philly we see that Tony’s demeanor changes completely. Thus the beauty that was portrayed just moments before is shattered by Tony’s disgust of black people. It’s incredibly tragic as we see a woman attempting to open her heart to a man who is shallow, selfish and small-minded. Tony claims he has an appointment to go to, which is a lie. As he attempts to leave he knows how horrible he is being, but the truth has already been revealed and Hugh doesn’t want him around.
PARTY AT HOME and THE SPLIT
Hugh invites some of his friends over to their apartment the following night where Lelia is introduced to Davey. David shows up to attempt to apologize for Tony’s actions as he feels he’s involved but his plea is cut short and he leaves. The night turns for the worse when Ben slaps a woman who is trying to hit on him and he and Hugh get into a fight. We’re able to see more about the story as revealed through the characters and their relationship to each other. We’re able to see that Hugh and Ben don’t view the world the same same way. For Hugh it is black and white, and through Ben’s eyes it is much different. This is apparent as well when Ben chooses to hear Tony out when he arrives at their apartment while Hugh wants to kick him out. But, this also shows the similar mind that the brothers have when Ben laughs after Tony leaves. He was playing him to whole time. Hugh and Ben want the same thing, they just go about getting it in completely different ways.
Cassavetes then shows us Lelia finally giving herself over to Davey who sees the truth about her. Then Hugh and Rupert decide to admit they believe in each other and not to keep trying to scrounge for jobs all over the country. That they are going to go for success in New York and stop being beholden to crap jobs in other cities. Meanwhile, Ben, Tom and Dennis hit on a couple of girls in a restaurant. The girl’s dates show up and beat them to a pulp leaving them on the street. Cassavetes is showing us how what we hold on to dictates the direction of our life. Lelia is holding on to loving Tony, a man who was willing to abandon her after being the first person she’d slept with; Hugh and Rupert decide to let go of trying to be good and make the choice to attempt to be great right where they are, and Ben and the boys can’t let go of their childish ways and they pay the price for it by getting physically hurt. And this is where we see Ben separate from the childish way he’s been living. He says, “No more of this jazz baby.” and in the final scene we see the friends go their separate ways. Tom still on the same path, Dennis somewhere in between and Ben leaving them both to let go of this life and attempt to figure out a better way to exist.
