Tonight's Movie: Gloria (1980) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

Gena Rowlands was Oscar-nominated in the title role of GLORIA (1980), which was just released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.

I'd never seen this film before and was intrigued by the plot description as well as friends' recommendations. It's not a perfect film, but it's engrossing and I liked it quite well.

As the movie begins, the family of Jack Dawn (Buck Henry), a mob accountant, is expecting a momentary visit from hit men who know that Jack has been talking to the FBI.

There's no time left to escape, but Jack's wife Jeri (Julie Carmen) persuades their neighbor Gloria (Rowlands) to take their six-year-old son Phil (John Adames) to her apartment when Gloria shows up to borrow some coffee. Jack also gives Phil an important ledger -- which might not have been the smartest move if he wanted to protect Phil's life...

Gloria and Phil hear gunshots and later are able to escape the apartment, but her photo appears on the news.

As it happens, Gloria was once the mistress of Tanzini (Basilio Franchino), the mobster who ordered the hit. The down side is that Tanzini's men have good ideas on where to look for Gloria; the up side is that Gloria has a unique understanding of mob tactics and is well equipped to do battle with the men chasing her and Phil.

Ultimately Gloria makes the decision to go to Tanzini with the book and see if they can make a deal.

This was a very interesting film, starting from the opening shots of New York City. The early scenes strongly reminded me of THE SEARCHERS (1956) and the sequence where the family realizes the Indians are coming and send Debbie away to hide. Nothing graphic is shown -- the film is rated PG -- we just hear the gun blasts down the hall.

I'll add that two key sequences in GLORIA take place in a cemetery, which also made me think of THE SEARCHERS, given that Debbie hides in the family cemetery.

Rowlands is terrific as the tough, savvy Gloria, who has no idea what to do with a kid but can't stand the idea of letting the mob kill him, and she's not shy about striking first when their lives are in danger.

The film was written and directed by Rowland's husband, John Cassavetes, and the script does let Gloria down from time to time. There are moments where it seems Gloria isn't making much effort to stay out of sight; doing that might make sense later, when she wants to make a deal, but not so much early on.

It's also got to be said that Adames is about as unappealing a child actor and performance as possible, and his dialogue also rings false. I guess the only good aspect of the portrayal is that Gloria comes off looking even better than if she had saved a nice, cute kid. Despite his bratty attitude Gloria seems to understand Phil and ultimately bond with him.

There were a couple aspects I didn't understand. A relatively minor issue is that when Gloria and Phil are going on the run, she grabs her cute cat. However, when Phil causes problems and Gloria has to chase him down in their apartment building, she lets go of the cat, who is never to be seen again.

I suppose Gloria figured it was their lives or the cat, but given that she liked the cat enough to try to take it with her, it seems as though something might have at least been said. As an animal lover, the question mark hanging over the cat bothered me. I hope one of Gloria's neighbors who was in the hall when she left took it in!

I also really didn't understand how things worked out the way they did in the final scene, but I'll leave it at that so as not to be too spoilery. I do think the audience was owed a little bit more of an explanation after having invested over two hours in the movie.

The film is slightly too long at 123 minutes and could have stood being trimmed by 10 minutes or so, but otherwise, despite its imperfections, this is an entertaining movie which I quite enjoyed. Rowlands is terrific, and I also appreciated that the film's violence was depicted with restraint.

The movie was filmed Fred Schuler. (I was thinking as I watched that this film would have been a great choice to shoot in black and white, but alas.) The score was by Bill Conti.

The Blu-ray print looks and sounds great. Disc extras are fairly minimal on this release, consisting of two trailers, plus a gallery of six additional trailers for other films available from Kino Lorber. The plastic case comes in a cardboard slipcase.

A trailer can be seen here. The style and narration are so "old school" that the trailer almost screams "1980"!

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.

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