''Love Streams'' is a 1984 American film directed by

John Cassavetes John Nicholas Cassavetes ( ; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. First known as a television and film actor, Cassavetes also helped pioneer American independent cinema, writing and direc ...

, in what would be his final independent feature and penultimate directorial project. The film tells the story of a middle-aged brother (Cassavetes) and sister ( Gena Rowlands) who find themselves relying on one another after being abandoned by their loved ones. The film was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the

Golden Bear The Golden Bear (german: Goldener Bär) is the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival. The bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin, featured on both the coat of arms and flag of Berlin. History The win ...

Plot

Undergoing a messy divorce from a husband and daughter tired of her continuously overwrought emotional states,Sarah Lawson visits her brother Robert Harmon, an alcoholic playboy and writer who is in a relationship with Susan, a professional singer, although he carefully avoids any real emotional commitment to anyone. Robert is visited by his ex-wife, who forces him to take care of their eight-year-old son, whom he has never met, for 24 hours. Robert's son is terrified by the hedonistic, decadent, womanizing world of his father and begs to be taken home following an overnight trip to Las Vegas filled with gambling and prostitutes. After dropping him off, Robert is beaten up by the boy's stepfather, after which his son testifies his love for Robert. Fleeing the scene, Robert returns home to take care of his sister, his "best friend." Sarah tries with some success to curb the nihilistic self-destruction of Robert's life and simultaneously deal with her own depression and divorce. She gets him some animals hope he can give his love to them and Robert struggles between his intense desire to protect his sister and the challenge of accepting her freedom as the necessary cost of love. Finally, after a bizarre dream of being in an opera with her husband and daughter, Sarah feels ready to resume her life and possibly even get her family back, or not. She walks away from the house in the middle of a storm as Robert looks on kind of sadly. He hallucinates that one of the dogs she gave him has turned into a naked man and is waving at him.

Cast

* Gena Rowlands as Sarah Lawson *

as Robert Harmon * Diahnne Abbott as Susan *

Seymour Cassel Seymour Joseph Cassel (January 22, 1935 – April 7, 2019) was an American actor who appeared in over 200 movies and television shows, and had a career that spanned over 50 years. Cassel first came to prominence in the 1960s in the pioneering in ...

as Jack Lawson * Margaret Abbott as Margarita * Jakob Shaw as Albie Swanson * Eddy Donno as Stepfather Swanson * Joan Foley as Judge Dunbar * Al Ruban as Milton Kravitz * Tom Badal as Sam the lawyer *

Doe Avedon Doe Avedon (born Dorcas Marie Nowell; April 7, 1925 – December 18, 2011) was an American model and actress. Early life Doe Avedon was born Dorcas Marie Nowell in Old Westbury, New York, Long Island on April 7, 1925. Her mother died when s ...

as Mrs. Kiner * Leslie Hope as Joanie

Production

''Love Streams'' is based on the 1980 play of the same name by

Ted Allan Alan Herman (January 26, 1916 – June 29, 1995), known professionally as Ted Allan, was a Canadian screenwriter, author, and poet, several of whose books were made into motion pictures. In 1975, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for ...

, but the correlation between the screenplay and the play is minimal. In the stage production, the role of Robert Harmon was played by

Jon Voight Jonathan Vincent Voight (; born December 29, 1938) is an American actor. He came to prominence in the late 1960s with his Academy Award–nominated performance as Joe Buck, a would-be gigolo, in ''Midnight Cowboy'' (1969). During the 1970s, h ...

; Cassavetes took this role for the film version. The visual style of the film is decidedly different from Cassavetes's other works; it contains no hand-held camera work (a trademark of his visual style). Much of it was shot inside Cassavetes's home.

Release

''Love Streams'' was originally released with a running time of 141 minutes. It was briefly available on

videotape Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videoca ...

in the mid 1980s in a version cut to 122 minutes by the distributor; one scene was edited and several unusual visual effects (the insertion of black leader and

jump cut A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which a single continuous sequential shot of a subject is broken into two parts, with a piece of footage being removed in order to render the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera positions of the subj ...

s) were removed. In 2003, it was released on DVD in France (along with '' A Child Is Waiting'') in its entirety. The 141-minute version received an American DVD and Blu-ray release for the first time in 2014 as part of The Criterion Collection.

Awards

The film was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival where it won the

Reception

The film has a 100% positive rating based on 16 reviews from critics at the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Japanese film director

Shinji Aoyama was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, composer, film critic, and novelist. He graduated from Rikkyo University. He won two awards at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for his film '' Eureka''. Biography Shinji Aoyama was born in Kitakyushu, ...

listed ''Love Streams'' as one of the Greatest Films of All Time in 2012. He said, "When I think about Cassavetes, I always feel happy. I feel glad that I like movies. I'm sure I will always feel this way until the day I die, and I intend to feel this way too. At the end of ''Love Streams'', Cassavetes smiles as he sees the dog next to him, which turned into a naked man. I live my life always wishing I can smile like that."

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, noting: "Viewers raised on trained and tame movies may be uncomfortable in the world of Cassavetes; his films are built around lots of talk and the waving of arms and the invoking of the gods... Sometimes (as in ''Husbands'') the wild truth-telling approach evaporates into a lot of empty talk and play-acting. In ''Love Streams'', it works." In 2015 the BBC named the film the 63rd greatest American movie ever made."The 100 Greatest American Films"

bbc.com BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services branded BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, the childre ...

, July 20, 2015

References

External links

*
''Love Streams: A Fitful Flow''
an essay by Dennis Lim at the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cine ...

Movie of the Week: ''Love Streams'' at the New Yorker
{{Golden Bear 1980-1999 1984 films American drama films 1980s English-language films Films directed by John Cassavetes Golan-Globus films Golden Bear winners 1984 drama films American independent films Films about siblings Films about dysfunctional families Films about writers Films based on Canadian plays Midlife crisis films 1984 independent films Films produced by Menahem Golan Films produced by Yoram Globus 1980s American films