Opening Night (1977)
Directed by John Cassavetes
Actress Myrtle Gordon is a functioning alcoholic who is a few days from the opening night of her latest play, concerning a woman distraught about aging. One night a car kills one of Myrtle's fans who is chasing her limousine in an attempt to get the star's attention. Myrtle internalizes the accident and goes on a spiritual quest, but fails to finds the answers she is after. As opening night inches closer and closer, fragile Myrtle must find a way to make the show go on.
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What critics compared Opening Night to
The film pays loving tribute to actresses and that genre of movies familiarly called "women's films" and Almodovar has merged three -- Bette Davis in "All About Eve," Gena Rowlands in "Opening Night" and Romy Schneider in "L'important c'est d'aimer" -- into a buoyant homage to the female sex, "women who act" and "actresses who have played actresses."
Yet despite those antecedents (and others, like Cassavetes' "Opening Night"), this film is pure Almod¢var.
I guess it represents a significant advance in his career, giving us a kinder, gentler, more soulful Almodovar who makes a lot more references than usual to other movies: All About Eve and A Streetcar Named Desire especially, but also (in terms of the story's point of departure) John Cassavetes's Opening Night.
It’s worth comparing it to another movie about actors in a troubled stage production as it speeds toward opening night—namely, John Cassavetes’s “ Opening Night .”
Everything from Look Back and The Fabelmans, to Singin’ in the Rain, The Hero, and Opening Night.