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.

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

$99.96

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

Current

Masks and Faces
Masks and Faces
The disc of Faces that you now hold is the most beautiful copy possible of a film that was meant to look lousy. Digital technology painstakingly reproduces John Cassavetes’s lighting, which allowed his actors to move about freely, and so lent his a…

By Stuart Klawans

Chloe Domont’s Top 10
Chloe Domont’s Top 10

The director of Fair Play throws the spotlight on bracingly candid explorations of heartbreaking love and destructive obsession.

Barry Levinson’s Top 10
Barry Levinson’s Top 10

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Barry Levinson is an Academy Award–winning director, screenwriter, and producer.

Jonas Carpignano’s Top 10
Jonas Carpignano’s Top 10

Jonas Carpignano was born in 1984 and grew up in New York City and Rome. His first feature film, Mediterranea, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival.

Stephen Cone’s Top 10
Stephen Cone’s Top 10

Stephen Cone is a Chicago-based filmmaker whose latest, Princess Cyd, opens in theaters November 2017.

An Actor’s Actor: Gena Rowlands in Conversation
An Actor’s Actor: Gena Rowlands in Conversation

In anticipation of a retrospective tribute to the collaborations of Rowlands and filmmaker John Cassavetes, we look at a candid conversation with the actor.

Troy Miller’s Top 10
Troy Miller’s Top 10

Troy Miller is a director and producer whose credits include the hit television comedies Mr. Show, Arrested Development, The Office, Flight of the Conchords, and Parks and Recreation.

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.