A Woman Without Peer: Gena Rowlands (1930-2024) | Tributes

Rowlands has appeared in several groundbreaking television films dealing with controversial subjects. A Question of Love (1978) told the story of a lesbian couple (Rowlands and Jane Alexander) raising three children from their previous marriages. One of the ex-spouses sues for custody and the case goes to court. Their sexuality is judged and it’s ugly. Rowlands is gorgeous and there are moments during the court scenes, especially when she listens to her teenage son on the stand, that rank with her best work. In 1985, he appeared in An Early Frost, the first film to deal with the AIDS crisis in a time of misinformation, fear and hatred. The success of “An Early Frost”—its ratings, nominations and winnings—was hugely important in raising the profile of the AIDS crisis, as well as humanizing it.

Rowlands also gave a major performance in Woody Allen’s Another Woman (1988). (I wrote the brochure essay for an Arrow Film box set release.) Another Woman features a killer’s array of talents: Ian Holm, Mia Farrow, Gene Hackman, Sandy Dennis, Betty Buckley, Martha Plimpton .. . but this is Rowlands’ film. She plays philosophy teacher Marion, the ultimate cool blonde. Marion is drawn back into the past and faces the damage she has done to others. Allen is in full Bergman mode here, the film’s structure similar to “Wild Strawberries,” with Allen hiring Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist to shoot the film. “Another Woman” is told primarily through intense Bergman-style close-ups of Rowlands’ face. These close-ups are unlike anything else she’s done before. They are riveting and uncomfortable. Roger Ebert’s review of Another Woman is worth a look, especially his insightful comments about Rowlands:

“There is a temptation to say that Rowlands has never been better than in this film, but that would not be true. She is an amazing actor who is usually so good and was so good before, especially in some of her husband John Cassavetes’ movies. What’s new here is the whole emotional tone of her character. Great actors and great directors sometimes find common emotional ground, so that the actor becomes an instrument singing the director’s song.

Cassavetes is a wild, passionate, emotionally disorganized, insecure and tumultuous spirit, and Rowlands reflected that personality in her characters for him – white-eyed women on the brink of fusion or collapse. Allen is introspective, thoughtful, apologetic, terrifically intelligent, and controls people by thought and word rather than physicality and temperament. Rowlands now mirrors that personality, revealing in the process how Cassavetes’ performances were really “acting” and not some sort of ersatz documentary reality. To see “Another Woman” is to gain insight into just how good of an actress Rowlands has been all along.“