John Cassavetes

Faces

Faces

John Cassavetes puts a disintegrating marriage under the microscope in the searing Faces. Shot in high-contrast 16 mm black and white, the film follows the futile attempts of the captain of industry Richard (John Marley) and his wife, Maria (Lynn Carlin), to escape the anguish of their empty relationship in the arms of others. Featuring astonishingly nervy performances from Marley, Carlin, and Cassavetes regulars Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, Faces confronts modern alienation and the battle of the sexes with a brutal honesty and compassion rarely matched in cinema.

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Film Info

  • United States
  • 1968
  • 130 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.66:1
  • English
  • Spine #252

Special Features

  • New, high-definition digital restoration, with newly restored uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Alternate eighteen-minute opening sequence
  • Episode of the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps from 1968, dedicated to director John Cassavetes
  • Making “Faces”, a 2004 documentary featuring interviews with actors Seymour Cassel, Lynn Carlin, and Gena Rowlands and director of photography Al Ruban
  • Al Ruban on Lighting and Shooting “Faces,” a new program featuring commentary by Ruban (Blu-ray); Lighting & Shooting the Film, a study of the techniques and equipment used on Faces by Al Ruban (DVD)
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by Stuart Klawans (DVD release)

New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

John Cassavetes: Five Films

John Cassavetes: Five Films

Blu-ray Box Set

5 Discs

$87.46

Special Features

  • New, high-definition digital restoration, with newly restored uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Alternate eighteen-minute opening sequence
  • Episode of the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps from 1968, dedicated to director John Cassavetes
  • Making “Faces”, a 2004 documentary featuring interviews with actors Seymour Cassel, Lynn Carlin, and Gena Rowlands and director of photography Al Ruban
  • Al Ruban on Lighting and Shooting “Faces,” a new program featuring commentary by Ruban (Blu-ray); Lighting & Shooting the Film, a study of the techniques and equipment used on Faces by Al Ruban (DVD)
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by Stuart Klawans (DVD release)

New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

Faces
Cast
John Marley
Richard Forst
Gena Rowlands
Jeannie Rapp
Lynn Carlin
Maria Forst
Fred Draper
Freddie
Seymour Cassel
Chet
Val Avery
Jim McCarthy
Credits
Director
John Cassavetes
Writer
John Cassavetes
Producer
Maurice McEndree
Associate producer
Al Ruban
Director of photography
Al Ruban
Camera operator
George Sims
Sound
Don Pike
Editors
Maurice McEndree
Editors
Al Ruban
Art director
Phedon Papamichael
Set decorator
Lady Rowlands

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Explore

John Cassavetes

Writer, Director

John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes

John Cassavetes’ emotionally naked human dramas are benchmarks of American independent cinema. Having started out in New York as an actor, Cassavetes brought to his directorial efforts the same kinetic, heightened realism that marked his film and theater roles—a wily danger, the sense that at any moment things could explode from the inside. Shadows (1959), the first film he directed, self-financed for a mere $40,000, didn’t find much of an audience upon its small initial release, but it garnered Cassavetes some notice from critics (including a Venice Film Festival Critics Prize)—as well as studios, resulting in a couple of impersonal projects in the 1960s (Too Late Blues, A Child Is Waiting). He dove back into personal filmmaking later in the decade with the devastating domestic drama Faces (1968). Though hardly a crowd-pleaser, that film—made, like Shadows, wholly independently—was an art-house success, resulting in three Oscar nominations. From that point on, Cassavetes was synonymous with uncompromising, anti-studio American fare, working with a rotating cast of brilliant actors like Ben Gazzara, Seymour Cassel, and, of course, his wife, Gena Rowlands, to touch raw nerves with such films as A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), and Opening Night (1976). Cassavetes died in 1989.

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