Ten years after his landmark directorial debut, Shadows, John Cassavetes returned to the indie model, self-financing this abrasive, wrenching portrait of the sexual mores and miseries of American middle class. It’s a singularly tough movie, positively Bergmanesque, shot in searing, high contrast black and white and set over the course of just 24 hours or so. Executive Richard (John Marley) and his buddy Freddie (Fred Draper) seek refuge from their sterile lives with bar girl Jeannie (Gena Rowlands), but Richard’s wife Maria (Lynn Carlin) is also out on the town, cavorting with hustler Chet (Seymour Cassel).
A blonde ingenue who played the Marilyn Monroe part in The Seven Year Itch on Broadway in the 50s, Rowlands essayed several supporting roles in the 1960s, including in Cassavetes’ A Child Is Waiting. But her performance as Jeannie, a call girl in Faces (1968) was a breakthrough. This too is a supporting part. Rowlands was pregnant at the time of shooting and ceded the larger part of Maria to Lynn Carlin (a secretary who would be Oscar-nominated for the role). But Gena’s Jeannie — in countless close ups — is the heart and soul of this film, a largely silent, watchful presence but again and again the barometer for the film’s emotional pull.
Despite or because of its severity, Faces played on screens for an entire year in New York City, and earned Academy Award nominations for Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassel, and for Cassavetes’ screenplay. More than Shadows, this was the real launching pad for the Independent film movement in the US.
Apr 25: Intro by VIFF Year-Round Programmer, Tom Charity
The masterful piece of our times.
LA Times
Faces is the sort of film that makes you want to grab people by the neck and drag them into the theater and shout: “Here!” It would be a triumphant shout… What Cassavetes has done is astonishing. He has made a film that tenderly, honestly and uncompromisingly examines the way we really live.
Roger Ebert
Rowlands and Cassavetes changed American cinema, and they also, as importantly, changed the women in it, making films that spoke to their liberated moment. Cassavetes may not have been a feminist, strictly speaking. Yet he and Rowlands made some of the greatest, truest films about women.
Manohla Dargis, New York Times
John Cassavetes
Gena Rowlands, John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery, Fred Draper
USA
1968
English
Nominated for 3 Academy Awards
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
John Cassavetes
Cinematography
Al Ruban
Editor
Maurice McEndree, Al Ruban
Art Director
Phedon Papamichael
Also in This Series
Dedicated to one of the most inspiring and influential American actresses of the past half century, this series showcases the versatility and star power that was Gena Rowlands.
Faces
Ten years after his landmark debut, Shadows, John Cassavetes returned to the indie model, self-financing this wrenching portrait of the sexual mores and miseries of American middle class. Gena Rowlands is luminous as Jeannie, the film's emotional barometer.
A Woman Under the Influence
Gena Rowlands is extraordinary in this painful and compassionate trial of love, the most intense and essential movie from legendary independent filmmaker John Cassavetes. "The toughest of all great American films." Kent Jones
Minnie and Moskowitz
John Cassavetes' deliciously witty take on Hollywood romance is a modern screwball comedy, a mismatched love story between a car park attendant (Seymour Cassel) and a museum administator (Gena Rowlands) who believes herelf to be too good for him.
Gloria
Gena Rowlands was nominated for Best Actress for her portrait of gangster's moll Gloria Swenson: a tough, chain-smoking broad who finds herself running from her former friends in the mob to protect her next door neighbour's orphaned six-year-old kid.
Love Streams
The last movie Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes made together is an eccentrically beautiful, painful piece about a writer (Cassavetes) broken out of his self-imposed exile by the arrival of a son he doesn't know, and a sister he hasn't seen in years.
