some questions about "Faces"

The "making fools of themselves" bit? I dunno, good question. Maybe he was breaking the mood to get the others to leave and go home (he was interested in Maria all along)? Maybe he was "testing" the ladies? Seeing how they would react? Maybe he was just tired/drunk. I've certainly been in that kind of state where some pleasurable activity you've been engaged in suddenly seems pointless.

You're right about Cassel, he's great at embodying like the ultimate hipster in this movie. The whole thing strikes as such a faithful portrait of the era, the fumbling nascent 'sexual liberation'. I think when Richard returns home, yeah the joy is just the result of his resolve, his feeling unencumbered. Plus maybe just some basic post-coital glow. He and Jeanne don't have sex in the first scene do they? I can't recall. Presumably they've had some kind of ongoing interaction, but it's hard to tell when exactly the last time he'd made love to her. Or at least done it without (without?) a guilty conscience. Maybe at base he's just psyching himself up for the inevitable encounter with Maria.

Overlapping dialogue doesn't bother me; that's kinda the sine qua non of Cassavetes, no? I think of something like the dinner scene in WUtI .. that's one of the most incredible and moving bits of cinema I've ever seen.

As for the overlapping dialogue, its obvious defense is that it's "realistic," but it seems extremely stylized to me. Less so in Shadows, where the tentativeness of the improvisation is both a high point and a problem.

I can't stand latter-day Rowlands, and I have problems with her really aggressive performance in ...Influence, but she is fairly magnificent in several of her husband's films, esp. Love Streams.

Peter Falk on the rumors that "all" or "much" of C's movies were improvised: "You think we could just come up with lines like that?"

The "making fools of themselves" bit as a ploy to spoil the mood and get everyone to go home so he could be with Maria: I guess it's possible but Cassel doesn't seem that Machavellian. Maybe he wanted to play the uptight woman's game, push her to protest gamely, get her to SEIZE THE REINS. She does, but in the most defensive way possible, and it's a disaster.

Oh, completely. That's why it feels like a more accurate evocation to me.

You know, amateurist, I was actually THISCLOSE to appending my Rowlands approbation with a parenthetical ("amateurist will come back and poo-poo her"). But I thought I'd extend an olive branch by way of not being snarky. Still, I have you pegged.

Why did you think I'd dislike Rowlands?

I asked Emma B if she'd ever seen a movie like Faces. She said yeah, it's like French cinema, like New Wave. But the women of Godard's movies are so idealized. If they become prostitutes it's like this giant moral turning point, or an escape into freedom, or something equally momentous. It's funny. Godard idolizes the women in his movies, but his characters treat them like they would treat any other human being (perhaps it's only a feigning of coolheadedness?). Cassavetes is the opposite: he treats the women in like he would anyone else, but his characters chase and idealize them. I think this is why I didn't realize Jeannie's profession: the way she was treated—by both the characters and the director—didn't fit my expectations of the Big-Screen Ho circa 1968.

The previews on the videotape were both for movies by some guy named Henry Jaglom. He appears to use filmmaking as an excuse to hang around lots of women and lord his genius over them. What a twat. Why he got two previews before Faces is beyond me.

The only New Wave film that resembles Cassavetes at all is The Mother and the Whore. But Cassavetes was avowedly anti-image (although the ways in which the image creeps into his work are fascinating, especially toward his last few movies) and much of the N.W. was hyper-aesthetic and really devoted to the image.

I think with Godard, esp. early Godard, his cinema has this tangible ontological quality. Here is Anna Karina, she is an actress, here she's trying to play the part of a prostitute, can you tell that I love her? Cassavetes seems to be aiming at a more conventional mimesis although the routes he takes are of course unusual.

-- Effie Rassos
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/16/cassavetes_faces.html

* Richard's silhouette, a foreground profile from the shoulders up, threatens to blot a woman right out of the frame. This happens at least twice. Maria and Jeannie are left only a sliver of screen to react to him.

* When Richard's college buddy humiliates Jeannie in the first scene, she slumps on her chair and lets her head hang over her knees. Her blonde hair falls down in a crazy waterfall. The camera cuts to a low angle that actually shows Richard's friend in the background, framed by this blonde hair. He, as I remember it, is imploring her to just let it go, don't worry about it, buck up, etc.

To call this film "anti-image" is just ridiculous.

It's been years since I saw Faces but when I think of it, I still have pretty vividly formed mental images of the interiors of the house (and I usually have pretty bad recall). Whether that speaks to Cassavetes's framing or just stronger impressions borne of heightened emotional content, I'm not sure. I can see the characters walking through the hallways, Cassel in front of the fireplace, upstairs in the bathroom, the final scene on the stairs...

BTW, I saw some Cassavetes tribute special on cable a few years back and one neat factoid I learned was that Lynn Carlin, who plays the wife, was apparently a secretary or receptionist or something with some Hollywood company (ok I actually don't remember it too well) and had never acted before, but Cassavetes insisted she play the part..