John Cassavetes' Opening Night is the kind of film that left me feeling humbled. The intensity of intellect and raw human emotion sent my mind spinning in a hundred different directions and left me tingling and edgy at its end.

Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes' lovely wife of 35 years and a brilliant actress, plays Myrtle, an actress who is facing her own mid-life crisis, triggered by both a role in a new play (titled "The Second Woman") and by the tragic death of a fan who was standing in the pouring rain to see Myrtle when she was struck by a moving vehicle.

The demons Myrtle faces — her status as a single woman, her choice of career over motherhood — are themes we've seen in many similar movies. One, which also starred Rowlands, Another Woman (Woody Allen, 1988), was like the intellectual version of Opening Night. Myrtle's experience is far more emotional, as we would expect from an actress who describes all of humanity as "wanting to be loved." Such a sentiment was uttered in All About Eve, a movie which explored the same themes as Opening Night, only with a much different flavor, when Eve described being on stage as having "waves of love" wash over you from the audience.

Myrtle navigates the frantic and almost claustrophobic environment of the stage, with director, writer, producer and other actors forever hovering and driving her deeper into her experience of self-doubt and alienation. She is cast in the part of a woman who is coming to terms with her age. Meanwhile, she is struck cold by the death of this teenaged, worshipful fan, who becomes the very real face of Myrtle's own youth.

For two hours and twenty minutes we journey through Myrtle's breakdown, but this is not a nervous spell that ends in a hospital, or a hysterical moment that passes like a bad dream. Rather, it is indeed a passage through the internal, one held together beautifully by Rowlands' brave and authentic ability. I can't help but wonder why no one makes films like this any more.

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