John Cassavetes - Faces (1968)

The disintegration of a marriage is dissected in John Cassavetes’ searing Faces. Shot in high-contrast 16 mm black and white, the film follows the futile attempts of captain of industry Richard Forst and his wife, Maria, to escape the anguish of their empty marriage in the arms of others. Featuring astonishingly powerful, nervy performances from Marley, Carlin, and Cassavetes regulars Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, Faces confronts suburban alienation and the battle of the sexes with a brutal honesty and compassion rarely matched in cinema.


Richard Forst, un maduro hombre de negocios casado, tiene una aventura con la joven Jeannie, y acto seguido le pide el divorcio a su mujer, María. Después de que Richard se haya ido de casa para estar con Jeannie, María conoce a un tipo en un bar y pasa la noche con él. A la mañana siguiente, Richard vuelve a su casa y encuentra a su esposa con su amante. Cuando éste huye, el matrimonio se tiene que enfrentar al problema cara a cara.

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.

Much of the film follows characters who are drunk, and while this also adds to the ‘realism’, it allows for a natural reason for the characters to spill their feelings without inhibitions. Cassavetes let scenes ramble on for huge chunks of time that other filmmakers never would allow. Yet, as in the poetry of Walt Whitman, there is a virtue in certain excesses. Richard, after a spat with Maria, moves out, and heads straight for the home of a call girl, Jeannie (Gena Rowlands), but she’s entertaining two drunks, along with her prostitute girlfriend. Some really great scenes play out as Richard spars with one of the drunks, a businessman whom he has vague connections with. Meanwhile, Maria and three of her girlfriends go out cruising LA bars, looking to pick up men. There, they meet Chet (Seymour Cassel), who offends one of them, does little to arouse another, gets the third, oldest and fattest, gal hot and bothered, but ends up sleeping with Maria, who responds to their tryst by taking Richard’s sleeping pills, the next morning, in a vain attempt to commit suicide. She fails, as a panicked Chet awakens to find her passed out, saves her life by sticking his finger down her throat, forcing her to vomit, and then slaps her silly, to awaken her. Soon, Richard comes home, and Chet skedaddles out the bedroom window, with Richard in pursuit.

What follows, to end the film, are several minutes of some of the most searing and brutal images put on film. Yes, we’ve all seen violence, senseless, gory, etc. But, here are two people who, if they ever had things in common, are long over that. They argue, bicker, then just give up, and slump on their stairs, tossing cigarets and a lighter back and forth. they smoke, realize there’s nothing left to fight about, and he heads upstairs, to finish pack, as she heads out to the kitchen, for breakfast. The final shot of the empty stairway is not only great symbolism, but one of the most frightening images on film, made all the more so since the film was shot on 16mm film, in black and white, with handheld cameras, thus giving the film its distinctive nightmarish feel.

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.
Dan Schneider, www.noripcord.com

Criterion Collection rip

Como todos los grandes cineastas que de una manera u otra desarrollaron gran parte de su carrera en la década de 1960, Cassavetes se adentró en el lenguaje cinematográfico para explorarlo, si bien él no era consciente de que estaba haciendo tal cosa. No era un cineasta de conceptos teóricos, aunque tenía bastante claro lo que para él consistía y significaba el cine. Siempre busca adentrarse en las emociones de los personajes, a quienes trataba como personas reales, quizá porque la gran mayoría de ellos poseían muchas de sus señas de identidad, de sus sueños y pesadillas, de su amor y de su odio. Deseaba que el espectador se sintiera identificado con aquello que sus imágenes mostraban, o con parte de ello, de ahí que tuviera claro que su estilo debía de adecuarse a esta idea emocional, poniendo a la técnica al servicio de los sentimientos y no a la inversa.
Rostros siempre ha destacado por el tratamiento que Cassavetes otorga a los primeros planos, en ocasiones primerísimos, buscando encuadrar los rostros de los personajes desde una cercanía, en ocasiones, excesiva. El rostro se convierte en la pantalla, ocupa todo el encuadre. Son planos que intermedian entre secuencias, casi como planos de transición y que podrían dar una idea errónea sobre su naturaleza, como si fueran innecesarios al romper la continuidad narrativa. Sin embargo, Cassavetes buscaba una expresión artística, casi vanguardista, donde poco le importaba que la narración pudiera verse alterada por esos planos, por esos acercamientos a los rostros donde la superficie de la piel, a través de la fotografía, posee una textura casi palpable. En realidad, antes que planos de transición, los rostros se convierten en una narración en sí misma: son los rostros, y sus expresiones, quienes nos cuentan algo.
Uno de los aspectos más importantes y modernos de Rostros reside en como Cassavetes limpia el encuadre, limitándolo a un mínimo de personajes y objetos, para que la mirada se centre en ellos y se olvide de otros aspectos. No quiere que el espectador guíe su mirada en busca de contemplaciones formales, tan sólo debe sentir aquello que ocurre ante él. La película es que lo que se ve, nada más; ni nada menos. Cada plano se alza como una representación emocional que posee importancia propia, aunque su relación con el resto posea relevancia. De alguna manera, podría decirse que Cassavetes crea cuadros, donde poco importa donde está la cámara colocada; es la superficie, lo que se ve, lo que en realidad posee relevancia.
Tomado de: miradas de cine - (www.miradas.net)

Script/Guión: John Cassavetes
Music/Música: Jack Ackerman
Cinematography/Fotografía: Al Ruban (B&W)
Cast/Reparto: John Marley, Gena Rowlands, Lynn Carlin, Fred Draper, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery