Faces
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Movie Reviews of Faces
Movie Review: fascinating film, but look for the criterion edition
Summary: 5 Stars
This is John Cassavettes' first film, that developed out of an improvisational acting workshop. For sheer power and authenticity (which are different from "realism") there is nothing like Cassavettes' non-studio films. Essential viewing for those who are interested in American cinema, especially the rise of auteur-based work that began in the '70s and continues (at least ostensibly, with a few films here and there) in the independent film scene today.
One note on this edition: there is a finer edition of this film available through the Criterion Collection, but you can't buy it "a la carte." You need to get it with the John Cassavettes collection, that includes this along with Shadows, Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Opening Night, and A Woman Under the Influence, and a solid (even if it could use some trimming and doesn't really work as a feature film in its own right) documentary on Cassavettes. The criterion version of Faces, along with a better transfer, also includes an alternate opening of this film (which was substantially altered after its initial release).
This is not a bad one to own as it stands. But if you really become captivated by this or have already become captivated by one of Cassavettes' other films, you'll be kicking yourself for buying this one and will really want to buy the bigger collection. (I know I was kicking myself until I broke down and bought the whole collection).
Movie Review: All the Lonely People
Summary: 5 Stars
I've never seen a movie quite like this in my life! It's technically raw, the sound's bad and half the time I had no idea what was going on, but it builds to a brilliant portrait of four lonely lives. The bad jokes and laughter that eat up so much film time connect loose, rambunctious scenes that defy strict narrative logic--after a while it feels like you're watching this movie from the inside, right in the thick of the cigarettes and booze. As usual, Cassavetes shoots the '60s from unexpected angles: his focus is on the middle-aged middle managers and their fading suburban wives, stuck on the wrong side of the Sexual Revolution but still desperate to feel young and fulfilled. The movie doesn't make fun of them but brings you into their world, where disappointment, age and the pressures of conformity are finally getting the best of their vitality. Imagine "The Graduate" told from Mrs. Robinson's point of view. The powerful last scene ends in silence after a suicide attempt--no laughs, no routines. The death of a marriage or a new beginning? Cassavetes rarely matched this level of intensity. "Faces" is one of his very best.Movie Review: Excellent
Summary: 4 Stars
Faces, by John Cassavetes, is a 1968 film generally credited as being the first popular independent film in America to make an impact in the public consciousness. But, it is more than that. It is a film that totally subverted the dominant themes and forms of Hollywood cinema, at the time, showed that `adult' films, truly adult, not a euphemism for pornography, could have mass appeal, and paved the way for the great auteur decade of American filmmaking that was the 1970s. That things have regressed severely, since then, only shows how much a young Cassavetes is needed these days.
But, it was totally different from the European auteur films of the 1960s, in that it eschewed symbolism, framing, and Post-Modern techniques of storytelling. Faces is a raw film that is laced with searing, realistic dialogue, and gives the impression that the viewer is truly eavesdropping on the private lives of people who could be them, for there are no Hollywood goddesses nor buff Adonises to be found in any scenes. And, unlike a master like Ingmar Bergman, who also focused on the inner emotional and psychological lives of individuals, Cassavetes' characters are not philosophizing nor posing in neatly framed boxes. This is not so much a criticism of the European poetic approach to film, merely to state that Cassavetes' style was far more revolutionary, and felt like actual cinema verité. In that sense, while one can argue ceaselessly over the relative excellence of certain directors, it is impossible to deny Cassavetes' importance in the pantheon of film's first century.
Nor can one deny Faces' importance, at least as a landmark, if not having lasting influence in Hollywood's Lowest Common Denominator output. The film follows the demise of the fourteen year marriage of Richard and Maria Forst (John Marley and Lynn Carlin), two LA suburban children of the post-World War Two boom, at the height of American affluence, just before Vietnam, Watergate, and the 1970s allowed the Conservative movement of the 1980s send standards of living into a spiral that has yet to stem. Why are they breaking up? We are never directly told. He's the head of a large company, and she a bored housewife, and while they still have things in common, and enjoy each other- as shown in a terrific scene of the couple in bed, laughing their heads off over lame jokes Richard tells, their marriage has just died. Neither could probably pinpoint where, much less why. But, the fact that they are still chuckling over the most inane jokes, just to please one another, says it all about most relationships- that they almost all end up as zombies. That's what makes this film so real, potent, and discomfiting. Contrast this to the Hollywood paradigm of the mid-1960s, Doris Day comedies, when the film was first started, and the difference is stark....But, the real stars of this film are the writing and acting. Cassavetes reaches Chekhovian heights of drama, admixed with Tennessee Williams' poetic realism, in his Oscar nominated Best Original Screenplay. It is truly among the greatest screenplays ever written, even if, as rumored, there was much improvisation in the dialogue. Here, for one of the few times on screen or stage, one gets to see the actor as creator, not merely collaborator. Lynn Carlin, in her first film role, is authentic as the clueless abandoned wife, and got an Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actress. Seymour Cassel, as he lover, is also fantastic, as a gigolo with a soft side, and also got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Gena Rowlands, as the prostitute, is neither victim nor saint, just a real person struggling with real problems, and gives her usual great performance, as one of the great actresses of all time in film. But, this film is dominated, from start to finish, by the towering performance of John Marley. How many of us have worked for a son of a bitch like him? How many women know a bastard like him? How many men reading this are a Richard Forst? The supporting actors- Fred Draper as Richard's drunken pal Freddie, Val Avery as the drunken Jim McCarthy, Dorothy Gulliver as Florence, the old lady Chet deigns to kiss, when she drunkenly pleads for affection- are uniformly terrific, as well.
The title of the film is based upon the notion that we all act in ways that are mere role playing for others, mere faces, and this has never been more true than in this film. A more apt title, though, might have been Personae, but since Bergman's singular Persona had recently been released, to great acclaim, this title suffices. No scene better and more aptly depicts why it suffices than in the terrific, nearly twenty minute opening scene, after the title sequence, which hints at the fact that, as Bergman was doing in that era, this film may all be a film some of the characters are watching, as a presentation to Forst as `the Dolce Vita of the commercial field.' That this meta-narrative aspect has not been commented on by many critics I find curious, but understandable, since no more than two or three minutes into the nearly twenty minutes that follow, we are given a bravura performance of drunkenness never before equaled, for its realism, onscreen. The strengths of this film are so many and so potent that things that in other films that would be weaknesses, such as fashions and dated slang, become strengths for this film has not dated. Its characters are as fresh as they were four decades ago, even if the film, itself, serves as a time capsule of the 1960s, yet one that is timeless.
Movie Review: MASKS
Summary: 4 Stars
Faces. The ones we put on for loved ones, for business associates, for friends, to impress, to hide ourselves behind, the ugly ones, maybe the real ones.John Cassavetes' films are personal explorations. They don't ignore conventions of film or theater but instead refuse to adhere to them.
The actors in Faces are exploring their characters from the inside out using improvised type methods (but writer/director Cassavetes created and adhered to real scripts prior to filming).
There's a rawness and vitality to the film that had almost never been captured on film before. At times the actors are trying too hard to dance on the edge of what an audience would be able to watch and accept. They are being characters, not presenting them to us, and they are not trying to be likeable or clever.
At times, the film sets up what is supposed to be an authentic and 'real' moment and then insists on selling it so hard as a real moment it becomes difficult and almost embarassing to watch because it's missed it mark. The truly awful Bennett Cerf style riddles and jokes husband (John Marley) tells his wife and then cackles on and on about as if they are truly funny is a truly annoying scene to watch. Were they meant to comment on how phony attempting to find and film a real moment truly is?
There's the long first scene of the film where one of the actors doesn't quite have the skill to shift tones convincingly. The idea of that is a great one though.
All of the ideas which challenge what a film and acting is are good ones. They don't always work, but through it the culture of American life is examined in a raw, honest way.
Here it's the marriage of an upper middle class couple which is under examination. The roles of men and women. The meaning perhaps of love, communication, and marriage.
Faces is a raw experimental film where actors are allowed to be both natural and ...well method actors. Some moments work so well, you wonder why these heights aren't regularly strived for... but then some moments don't work at all and you realize, this is film-making without a net. It's risky, it's not pretty, and it's messy - - For the performers particularly.
It's a masterpiece, though like many of J.C.'s film difficult to watch. You might be annoyed, bored, bothered, and/or disgusted by the film. At the end you might not quite understand what it all was about.
But, you'll remember it.
Christopher J. Jarmick Author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder Available February 2001.
Movie Review: Very good, a bit inaccessible
Summary: 4 Stars
John Cassavetes is certainly an interesting director (great actor too, but interesting director). Instead of directing films for entertainment, he directs them to present a "slice-of-life", so to speak, only one that is usually tumultuous and unkind. His movies are generally uphill battles to watch, but they're worth it.
In this film, an over-the-hill man and woman break up and persue other, younger paramours. While successful, they still have to deal with their own separate pain and fear of many things, amongst them age, loneliness, and friendship.
The writing and the acting are the most important parts. The writing is at times brilliant, the rest of the time brutal. Cassavetes tries for a more realistic, human approach, which means characters go off in tangents, talk unproductively, and are often really mean to each other. The acting complements the dialog so perfectly that one doesn't see actors on screen, but characters; only moreso than characters, one sees people, as if watching a home video with a disturbing and powerful plot.
Cassavetes was also one to specifically not care about structure. This makes the directing, editing, and cinematography rather jarring and condense. Luckily, it works with the themes of this movie well enough that the movie itself maintains a sense of entrapment and abuse.
It's a great film, though it's an uphill battle to watch. It's amazingly written but it's very inaccessible. I'd recommend it, but you must heed that it won't be something you can just sit down and escape into.
--PolarisDiB
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