Faces

Faces (Criterion #252). 1968 Janus Films and Castle Hill Productions
Starring: John Marley, Gena Rowlands, Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassell, Fred Draper, Val Avery, Dorothy Gulliver
Director: John Cassavetes
Faces is currently available as part of the John Cassavetes: Five Films box set. It will be released separately from the box on February 17th, 2009.

John Cassavetes directed this amazing documentary of the great band the Faces, led by a not-at-all afraid to rock out Rod Stewart and future Rolling Stone Ron Wood, and...wha? Oh yeah.

Anyway, Cassavetes directed a grainy, black and white (for artistic purposes) film of a married couple (Marley & Carlin) whose union is disintegrating after fourteen years. After a nasty argument where he finally expresses his desire for a divorce, Richard goes out and hires a prostitute (Rowland), while his wife Marla meets up with her girl friends, and they pick up a hippie (Cassell) who she has a one-night stand with. Marla finds out that she is just as unsatisfied with this tryst as she would have been staying in her marriage to Richard.

Faces has a lot of dramatic closeups of the characters, almost to an uncomfortable degree, giving the viewer the feeling that not only are they right there, they probably will feel just as dissatisfied and unhappy as the characters in the movie are portrayed. It also was reportedly six hours long originally. Cassavetes also invited a young Steven Spielberg to help out during the making of this movie, and he served as an uncredited production assistant for two weeks.

Really good movie. Highly recommended.