Product: Faces [VHS] (1968)
Rating: 5.0
Classic Cassavetes infidelity theme with lush jazz score
John Cassavetes was a sometime actor but primarily indie film director extraordinaire, and Faces was one of his best directing works. His beautiful real-life wife Gena Rowlands, then an Angie Dickinson lookalike, was his muse in many of his films including this one, playing a party girl/call girl with an assortment of men friends fighting over her attentions. One of the guys is John Marley (best remembered for his role as the Hollywood producer in the first Godfather, who finds a horse's head in his bed), who plays an unhappily married successful businessman, whose wife is also unfaithful. Seymour Cassel, a regular Cassavetes film participant, has a delightful role here of a ladies man barfly who has a group of disillusioned middle aged ladies enamored of him, all hoping to be his choice of the evening. In the different situations everyone is drinking highballs and making social attempts at gaiety to hide their inner unhappiness, which may be where the Faces title comes from, i.e. putting on a social face to hide the real person inside; although as well, there are many facial closeups of the actors throughout the film. One of the loveliest though somber film jazz scores ever, the soundtrack was made into a record that I used to own, but have looked for on CD and cannot find (the tunes evoke Chet Baker's style). Despite the serious tone of the movie, you will find a scene toward the end hysterically funny, that of the married wife caught cheating by the husband in their bedroom with Seymour Cassel, and his attempt to evade the husband is classic and hilarious. If you are not already a fan of John Cassavetes' offbeat films, this picture will intrigue you into becoming one.