Gena Rowland

(On Cable TV, January 2022) I’m not a big fan of the gritty 1970s style of filmmaking, but it is an integral part of Gloria, and you can almost see in the film a transition from the doom-and-gloom of the 1970s to the more hopeful 1980s. The titular Gloria (a terrific performance from Gena Rowland) is a tough and sullen middle-aged woman with an intimate history with the Manhattan organized crime underworld. But she’s not prepared when she’s asked to protect a boy when his parents are gunned down for informing. On the run, she gets to befriend the boy, keep ahead of the mob and grow up along the way. This is all handled against the dispiriting backdrop of Manhattan during some of its worst years, with the mob being powerful enough to prevent them from leaving the island. Fortunately, the protagonist is up to the task—picking off mob enforcers every time they get too close, and eventually confronting them in their den. Writer-director John Cassavetes was working to order when he wrote the script (the assignment: a star vehicle for a child actor, then a good role for his wife) and almost accidentally ended up with one of his most accessible films in the process. Despite the familiar nature of the story, Gloria fights hard for its happy ending—it’s a film best taken in as a series of moments anchored by Rowland’s strong performance. Not quite as bleak as the NYC mob stories of the 1970, you can retrospectively see in Gloria the way the New Hollywood was re-aligning itself for broader commercial appeal by the time the 1980s rolled in—not necessarily a victory for proponents of that movement, but something that has aged rather well for everyone else.