Faces
“An actor is a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, ain’t listening.” Marlon Brando
The American actor and film director John Nicholas Cassavetes was born December 9, 1929, in New York City. The son of Greek parents, he spent his early childhood with his family in Greece, returning to New York at age seven speaking no English.
From that beginning, John Cassavetes would go on to fashion a style of acting and movie making that redefined how people expressed themselves on screen.
After high school and a couple of short academic stops, he enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where he met his wife, actress Gena Rowlands.
By 1956, Cassavetes was teaching his own acting workshop, presenting an alternative to the style of method acting practiced at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio. Cassavetes said that the method was, “more a form of psychotherapy than of acting.”
Method acting encouraged performers to identify with and experience a character’s inner motivations and feelings. Cassavetes argued that an actor did not need a backstory to play a role. He felt that a character should be expressed by being in the moment while relating to others.
In 1959, Cassavetes began his writing and directing career with “Shadows,” a film about race relations in New York. Although an early version was said to have been improvised, the final film was fully scripted.
Cassavetes was a talented writer, and, although he gave latitude in how dialogue was delivered, he expected actors to say the lines as written.
In the early 1960s, Cassavetes directed two Hollywood movies, “Too Late Blues,” starring Bobby Darin and Stella Stevens, and “A Child is Waiting,” with Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland.
With money from these efforts, as well as acting roles in movies and television, he relocated to California and made his succeeding films outside of the Hollywood studio system.
“I always feel left out of most movies,” Cassavetes said. “They have nothing to do with me.” Instead, he portrayed the lives of ordinary people, not stories about the wealthy that Hollywood favored.
In 1968, Cassavetes released “Faces,” a self-financed movie about the breakdown of a marriage. Like “Shadows,” “Faces” was shot in black and white in 16mm and blown up to 35mm for theatrical release, giving the film a gritty, documentary look.
John Marley and newcomer Lynn Carlin played the troubled married couple, and the movie was cast with Cassavetes regulars, Gena Rowland, Seymour Cassel, Val Avery, and Fred Draper.
The film has been described as one long cocktail party. It has also been said that “Faces” is a story about how people really live.
“There’s a Bergman film in the neighborhood,” Lynn Carlin says, and John Marley replies, “I don’t feel like getting depressed tonight.”
“What do you want to drink?” he asks his wife, and she says, “Well, whatever it is, I want it on the rocks, straight and dirty, because I feel very bitchy tonight.”
“I feel very bitchy, too,” he tells her. “That makes two of us.”
Filled with searing close-ups and scenes with long, uninterrupted shots, the movie has a hyper-real quality to it, which is the Cassavetes signature. “Faces” was nominated for three Academy Awards.
In 1970, Cassavetes made “Husbands,” in color, with buddies Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. With Cassavetes acting as well, it’s the story of three middle-aged men, husbands and fathers, who have been shocked by the sudden death of their mutual friend.
The three impulsively fly to London where they check into a deluxe hotel, dress in tuxedos, and head for a casino. There, they interact with a cavalcade of characters, including three young women.
They bring the women back to their rooms, but their efforts to be romantic end up as awkward and unsuccessful encounters. In the end, Falk and Cassavetes go home while Ben Gazzara stays behind.
“I never understood a word John was saying when he was directing,” Peter Falk said. “He’d grab your attention and start talking about one thing and then he’d be talking about something else, and you would get so confused, and think to yourself, oh, Jesus, am I missing something, and suddenly John would yell, ‘Action!’ And you would be completely off balance, which is just where he wanted you.”
Falk said that Cassavetes wasn’t interested in your technique, or your ideas, he wanted you to drop all that and play the scene.
In a television interview, Cassavetes was asked what his movies were about, and he answered, “I don’t know what these things are about. They’re about people.”
Cassavetes photographed his people in painstaking detail, their faces, gestures, pauses, and inclinations. He was looking for realistic portrayals of real-life situations. He wanted performers to stop acting and start being, and, above all, he wanted honesty and truthfulness.
While making “Minnie and Moskowitz,” in 1971, Cassavetes was shooting a scene at an Italian restaurant in Hollywood. The scene involved Gena Rowlands on a blind date with Val Avery, a bitter widower who is very nervous.
The tables in the restaurant were populated with extras who pantomimed talking and eating. As the date goes on, Val Avery gets more and more worked up, and eventually starts shouting at the top of his voice, while Gena Rowlands hurries to put her sunglasses on.
“My, you’re tall and lovely,” Val Avery says desperately. “How tall and lovely are you?”
The scene ends with Gena Rowland jumping up suddenly and fleeing the restaurant, with Val Avery in close pursuit.
Throughout, the extras continued on as they were, nodding their heads and pretending to be in conversation.
After he said, “Cut,” Cassavetes turned and faced the room. “Did any of you see that?” he asked, gesturing toward the table. He was met with a roomful of blank stares.
“That man,” he said pointing, “was going crazy, who knows what he was doing, who knows what he was going to do next. But you don’t look, you don’t turn, you keep going as if nothing is happening. Does that seem like normal behavior to you?”
Cassavetes took a deep breath, looked around, then said loudly so everyone could hear, “Listen, idiots! Act human!”
O’Connell Driscoll
July 2024
oconnelldriscoll@gmail.com