John Cassavetes
La Sera della Prima

With this film, America's most independent director conveys all his love for cinema and theater by blending them with life: the film tells the story of a great theater actress, who has lived for the theater, around her fifties, in crisis with herself and her life passing by, who relies on alcohol and cigarettes and struggles to play a character slightly older than her. She thus finds herself facing her ghosts, her projections of youth and seduction against the passing of time.

The film constantly shifts from the plane of theater to that of reality, between what happens on stage and what happens behind the scenes, between the emotions on stage and those of life, and it is not said that the boundary between the two is so defined: in the film, in fact, the real neurosis of this woman, who has to contend with the passing years and the ghost of a girl who died for her (who wanted to take her place, and here you can feel a reminiscence of "All About Eve"), is perceived by the entourage as just another tantrum, the usual diva hysteria while she is genuinely suffering. The theater becomes life: will the woman succeed in performing the play, which, coincidentally, is titled "The Second Woman"? Will the actress manage to find within herself a new woman, a new self? Will she manage to connect with herself, with her true part, in the ultimate moment of pretense (which perhaps is the truth)?

This is revealed in the splendid finale, which shines not only for these refined psychological plots but also for the charm of the Broadway theater atmosphere (also splendid because in the final scene the actress has to play the part of a woman in conflict with her husband, who happens to be her lover that now rejects her).

The whole is enriched by a wonderful psychological analysis of the characters, the liveliness of the dialogues, and the continuous camera movements typical of the splendid director that convey all the internal drama of the character (the beginning and the fight with the spirit are splendid) where for both the director, movement is life, and so for the protagonist, reinventing, renewing is living.

Good performance by Ben Gazzara and a state of grace performance by the magnificent Gena Rowlands, the director's wife and muse.