Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30058 in VHS
• Released on: 1999-02-02
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 131 minutes

Amazon.com
Three real-life buddies (John Cassavetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara) team up to play three pals whose lives suffer a shock wave when a fourth friend drops dead. After the funeral, the three friends, feeling death's hot breath on their own necks, take off on a weekend-long debauch, with way too much drinking and loose women. But, in the process, they have lengthy heart-to-hearts about the nature of friendship, manhood, and marriage, among other things. As strong an example of Cassavetes's improvisational art as any of his films, this film may test your patience with his indulgent treatment of actors, allowing them to explore their characters on film. Sometimes they come up empty, but more often, they find precious moments and revelations. And these three guys play off each other like long-time partners in a high-wire game of chicken in which they all emerge as winners. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews

Complex Comedy
In Ray Carney's new book about Cassavetes he talks about how the director spent
a year re-editing this movie because he thought it was too "entertaining" and
too "funny" in its first version. Ray Carney's Cassavetes on Cassavetes has
hundreds of similar anecdotes by the filmmaker. It's a perfect introduction to
Husbands. It's anything but a simple comedy. The characters are as unpredictable
as real people and the situations as hard to figure out as stuff in real life.
Husbands gets you all mixed up. Are these guys idiots or inspired? Are they
jerks or pursuing a dream? Cassavetes doesn't want it to be too clear or too
easy to understand. He doesn't want us to laugh off the serious questions. He
talks about that in Carney's book, but it's obvious from the film itself. This
film should be required viewing for all men, so maybe they can begin to
understand themselves, and it should be required viewing for all women so that
they can begin to understand the men in their lives. It's!
not an easy thing to understand, which is why Cassavetes doesn't make the movie
easy for us to understand, but the more times you see it, the more you will see.
Read the Carney book too, for more of Cassavetes' amazing insights into men and
women and what he was trying to do in his films.

pain is good
This is an excruciating, frustrating, painful comedy of men, and amazing in retrospect. Cassavetes was an authentic cinematic genius of American film, regardless of the philistine like comments I've seen in these reviews. What I don't undertand is why they haven't made it available on DVD. Are they restoring it? Are there legal tie-ups? What? I've only ever seen it in pieces on television. I would love to be able to examine fully, without commerical interruption or deletion....

IMPROVISING AT IT'S BEST, "...THE LEGS GO AT 35!"
I FIRST VIEWED,"HUSBANDS", IN THE THEATRE. NOW 29 YRS LATER, MYSELF MIDDLE AGE AND MARRIED, I SEE BEHIND THE EYES OF THESE ACTORS AND FINALLY REALIZE THEIR MESSAGE. THEY APPEARED ON, THE DICK CAVET SHOW DURING THE MOVIES PREMIER AND LITERALLY TOOK IT OVER. I OWN THE VIDEO AND RECCOMEND IT TO ALL "HUSBANDS'.