| Continental Distributing | Release Date: November 24, 1968 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
15
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
This is the world through the idiosyncratic eye of Cassavetes, which is both all-forgiving and inexhaustibly, passionately nosy. [28 Jun 1991, p.F8]
Partly improvised, partly scripted, and partly somewhere between the two, Cassavetes' films have frequently been likened to jazz. Faces bears the stamp of its particular era's jazz; it trades in long stretches of chaos, even ugliness, which produce unexpected passages of grace and beauty. As punishing as that ugliness can be, the graceful bits stick in the memory.
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There is a lot of joy in Faces—John Cassavetes’ second real “Cassavetes” film, 10 years after Shadows—and there is also a lot of anger. Often there’s a drunken combination of the two. But no matter what emotion dominates, the movie itself has the same edge, the same itchiness. It’s constantly scratching its own skin.
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The plot is bare and a little cliched, but the film's dramatic scenes, usually shot with a roving camera and lighted in fairly crude ways, are realistically, almost voyeuristicly, staged. [04 Jul 1991, p.13]
Abrasive at times, delving into bewildering behaviors and moral complexities that the characters sadly fail to understand. What's undeniable is the propulsive honesty and unstoppable energy of their black-and-white images and the foreshadowing they provide of later Cassavetes movies. [14 Mar 1996]
This film put Cassavetes on the cinematic map, even though at 90 minutes, it was 4.5 hours short of Cassavetes' intended version, which exists now only in published script form. [19 Sep 1997, p.36]
Though it seems even spottier today than it did in '68, Cassavetes' most acclaimed work rebounds impressively after a near-unbearable opening half-hour. [29 Mar 1996]
Working out of themselves (as his actors do), they can't create characters. Their performances don't have enough range, so we tend to tire of them before the movie is finished. Still, a lot of people found this psychodrama agonizingly true and beautiful.
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