Most critics probably have their favorite John Cassavetes picture and many would choose Faces. I can’t say why because it’s no favorite of mine, but it did earn several Academy Award nominations (including one for Best Screenplay) and the acting is exceptionally good. Perhaps it simply rode a wave of other, better films that also portrayed real human beings that didn’t look like and acted like movie stars. The old Hollywood was dying and the new one wanted to show that it still knew how to connect with audiences.

The story is not very complicated; its main theme is adultery. Mr. Cassavetes introduces us to a married couple. The husband, Richard Forst (John Marley), has been seeing a prostitute, Jeannie Rapp (Gena Rowlands), and the time has come when he is ready to tell his wife, Maria (Lynn Carlin), that he wants a divorce. Richard then tries to get his relationship with Jeannie off the ground while Maria goes out partying with her friends and brings a young stud into her life. In the end, the couple does see each other again, but we’re not told whether their marriage is saved or not. It is up to the audience to analyze what has been going on in the film and come up with a conclusion. The title is well chosen; we all have different faces for different situations and there are plenty of sequences here where appearances are challenged. Sometimes a face can be saved, sometimes not; it is when we lose face that we are the most vulnerable and the most obvious example of this in the film is an attempted suicide. That is a thoroughly gripping sequence, which makes me wonder why it was necessary to stuff the rest of the film with so many other scenes where drunk, middle-aged people embarrass themselves. Is it believable? Hell, yes. Is it fascinating? Hell, no, because it goes on forever. Some parts of the film are nice and tender, others are pretty funny (there’s a silly encounter between Richard and one of Jeannie’s other drunk, middle-aged gentleman callers), but all the sequences where everybody do nothing but say stupid things and laugh about it tend to get boring. Perhaps Faces is not meant to be seen sober.

Those who know their Cassavetes will recognize his style. The film is shot with handheld camera in grainy black-and-white, the sound quality is poor and the locations genuine. Everything tends to get a bit crowded as the camera physically stays very close to the characters; you are virtually in their (yes, you got it) faces. Some would call this kind of filmmaking typically artsy, but wouldn’t you also say that the parties in the film do feel like something we’ve all attended at one time or another? The actors reinforce the sense of realism; Rowlands’ portrayal of a hooker does not feel like the typical cliché one might expect and Seymour Cassel, who plays the young stud, delivers a mesmerizing performance in the scene where Maria and her friends have been out partying.

This is a film I can admire without really enjoying it. There is a lot of emotion in it, it’s passionately made, but you can see this stuff take place at any run-down bar any Saturday night.

Faces 1968-U.S. 130 min. B/W. Written and directed by John Cassavetes. Cast: John Marley (Richard Forst), Gena Rowlands (Jeannie Rapp), Lynn Carlin (Maria Forst), Seymour Cassel, Fred Draper, Val Avery.

► John Cassavetes: “[Producer Mo McEndree and I] started thinking about what kind of picture we would make. He remembered a ten-page piece of dialog I had written during my two-year exile, a thing about two men talking about the good old days; he suggested I develop it. So I got on a typewriter for a month and I wound up with 175 pages of script – which I thought was going to be a play. We got actors to look at it; Val Avery and John Marley read it and liked it and asked to be in it. There was a secretary in an office across the hall named Lynn Carlin, who I knew would be great for the part of the wife. I lined Gena up to play a prostitute and Seymour Cassel told me he wanted to play the beach bum. We got into rehearsals and they were going so well that I said ‘Ah, the hell with the play, let’s make it into a movie.’ And that’s how I got started on Faces.” (Interview from Playboy)

Venice: Best Actor (Marley).

Published 2005-04-22 16:08