Shadows was a really good, admirable film with some rough edges-- Faces is just an outright great film. The anguish of these characters, captured through Cassavetes' probing camera and tight dialogue feels almost documentarian in its authenticity. These individuals are separated by social class and age amongst other factors, but they are unified in their resignation to the apathy of American society. The script is fantastic, the performances are fantastic, and it's surprisingly funny to boot.

:(

469

Raw and emotional, the copious amounts of nervous laughter that fill this film are the most obvious expression of the internal turmoil these characters hide behind a nonchalant facade. Great use of closeups and space too, showing the characters struggle with their interactions.

What a painful movie to watch. Hard enough to get through, let alone to enjoy. What vapid and tedious characters. Why should I want to be in a room with them for two hours? Criticker hasn't given me such an inaccurate suggestion since Fellini's 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita, which I couldn't tolerate for many of the same reasons.

Great verite atmosphere. Cassavetes was king of the ugly American film.

#461

FACES plunges into the drunken maelstrom of butchered songs, empty jokes, and emptier insights which make up the lives of a unhappy couple, their lovers, and their circle of equally grim friends. It may sound sensational, but it feels very real, in no small part due to the brilliant acting from John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel, etc., John Cassavetes' unflinching script and direction, and Al Ruban's cinematography, which captures the titular faces with gorgeous graininess.

Cassavetes's point is absolutely devastating. It's a shame he has to make it by brutalizing the audience with an hour and a half of drunken caterwauling followed by a brilliant, sober, final 30 minutes.

It's supposed to be a serious drama on relationships, but it fails significantly; it feels artificial and unrealistic the harder it tries to be realistic. With the actors attempting to be spontaneous, it comes off as a failed experimental theatre piece which suffers from its production values too. Thankfully after this and 'Shadows', Cassavetes would go on to make some great films, but they involved more cohesive plots or using genre tropes to go off in their own directions.

I think this film, despite being one of Cassavetes' best, proves the often-repeated story that he re-edited his films whenever the test audiences "enjoyed them too much." Immensely repetitive and grating in spots, particularly the party at the beginning; otherwise, the content is incredible and it's a masterfully dramatic and realistic film.

A fantastic film radiating a feeling of unfeigned despair.

# 437

A hell of a wonderful cinematography and camera work.

Great film. Cassavetes is hard to watch, but this is well worth that. And it's beautiful.

Husbands (1970) does some of the same things better, but this is still excellent. Faces makes you realize the complete absence of laughter (not humor but actual characters laughing) in most movies. This one has laughter to spare. It's also steeped in unrestrained, extroverted dialogue, but most of the drama, the real interaction, goes on outside of speech. Cassavetes' hyper-realism and his unique style of cinematography add up to a deeply personal, easily recognizable cinematic thumbprint.

Throughout, it's not necessarily the most involving movie, but it all comes together to make for a very satisfying experience in the end. There are certain scenes and moments of powerful emotional intensity, and overall, I would say this does as good a job as dramatically representing relationships as anything else I've seen. It's got scenes that perfectly capture real life, the combination of sadness, anger, and laughter that is absent in so many movies.

The performances are great here, marred only by some distracting sound sync problems. Doesn't have the emotional intensity of Woman Under the Influence, but it comes pretty close in parts.

I want to applaud small experimental films like this, but the neorealists did this kind of thing better