Cassavetes created vehicles for himself (Husbands), his wife Gena Rowlands (Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence), and a select group of actors that he liked.
In A Woman Under Influence, an insightful essay on sexual politics, Mabel is a housewife who crosses the line into sanity. With a light feminist touch, she is perceived as a victim of a repressive patriarchal order and imposed social roles. Cassavetes sees Mabel as desperate, yet courageous enough woman not to pull back from madness, but descend into it, confronting every facet of life with her husband Nick (Peter Falk). Cassavetes never considered Mabel insane, just a woman who has her subjective way of perceiving the world, insisting on the validity of her feelings.
Cassavetes allows no distance: Like Mabel's family, the viewers are forced into the troubling experience of her life. As Michael Ventura pointed out, for Cassavetes that was the meaning of family, refusing to compromise the portrayal with comfortable cuts and smooth scene changes. Even in her worst pain, Mabel possesses a transcendent beauty that affects those around her. This was Cassavetes' strong point: Love can exist in the most horrible circumstances, an idea that would be later embraced by David Lynch.
Contrary to popular notion, the film's underlying structure is so rigorous that every aspect of Mabel's conduct receives equal attention. As always, though, Cassavetes' approach depends more on the actors' personalities than on pre-determined scripts and camera technique. He provided the essential key to his philosophy when he said, "I'm more interested in the people who work with me than in film itself." That's why his films go deeper than most in their explorations of the emotional truth of their participants.
Gena Rwolands received a well-deserved Oscar nomination as Best Actress for this movie, which represents the height of her and Cassavetes' careers.
A Woman Under the Influence was innovative in another major way. Dismayed by the poor distribution of his previous films, Cassavetes, Falk and Rowlands traveled from coast to coast to promote and book their movie directly with theaters. This pattern would encourage other indie filmmakers to take control of the distribution of their movies and often release them by themselves.
