Faces

  • Tuesday July 09, 2019 7:00 PM

What Cassavetes has done is astonishing. He has made a film that tenderly, honestly and uncompromisingly examines the way we really live. Roger Ebert, December 19, 1968

Artist Stephen Lapthisophon completes his three-week presentation of pertinent films with the 1968 film Faces, directed by John Cassavetes, shot by Haskell Wexler, and starring, in addition to Gena Rowlands and others, the recently departed Seymour Cassel. The film depicts Los Angeles middle-class ennui in the late 1960s in a way that is raw, improvisational, and challenging. Richard Brody wrote for the New Yorker, July 5, 2016, "The liberated actors blend impulsive comedy, intense physicality, and agonized tenderness; the spontaneous camera work offers soul-baring closeups and sculptural compositions. With its unsparing confessional drama, Faces set the themes, the moods, and the styles for the rest of [Cassavetes’s] career. It also inaugurated a new era in the history of cinema, opening possibilities that most directors have yet to confront or even admit."

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Tuesday Evenings at the Modern: Films this summer focuses on filmmakers and films that have some direct or indirect relationship with the issues and circumstances of time, philosophy, and/or form found in Disappearing—California, c. 1970: Bas Jan Ader, Chris Burden, Jack Goldstein. To create a full experience, these presentations include a brief introduction and opportunity for discussion following the films when time allows. As a special addition, this summer some of the films will be selected and introduced by guest presenters.

This program begins at 7 pm. Seating is available in the Modern’s auditorium at 6:30 pm. The museum’s galleries are open until 7 pm on Tuesdays during the run of Tuesday Evenings at the Modern: Films. This program is free and open to the public. Up to two free tickets can be obtained at the admission desk beginning at 5 pm the day of the screening.