Educational Media Reviews Online

This portrait of John Cassavetes captures the essence of the filmmaker: his spontaneity, imaginativeness, individualism, and forthrightness. Cassavetes has been recognized as one of the great risk-takers of American cinema, a director who strove to capture the Zen of feelings on film. In all of Cassavetes films, we enter into the life of his characters, where the nakedness of emotions - be they anger, love, sadness, hate, joy, hurt - are so tangible and raw that there is often discomfort in witnessing the actors’ vulnerabilities. His characters mirror us and the messy, unpredictable, circuitous nature of our own relationships.

Cassavetes’ directorial genius lies in his ability to allow his actors to improvise and allow the scene to develop organically so that an epiphany of connection is achieved among them. They constantly grapple with their tender cores. His scenes evoke a sense of real time and freshness wherein the actors have broken the boundaries of traditional narrative form and have crossed over into more natural, free-flowing, and uninhibited acting. A master of close-up shots, Cassevetes brings us face to face with his characters and allows us to feel intimate and close to them.

Shot in Los Angeles in 1965, this documentary continues in Paris in 1968.Clips from Shadows and Faces are intercut and counterpoint Cassavetes’ revelations about his maverick challenges to the Hollywood mill. He remains steadfast in his dedication to cinema as an art form and details the novel ways he has raised money for his productions, as well as setting up his own home as a production base.

This documentary echoes the cinema verite style of Cassavetes’s films themselves by allowing Cassavetes to speak openly about himself, work and passion for an emotionally charged cinema that seeks to visualize the spark among human beings. His joie de vivre and exuberance is omnipresent, and although we only get a glimpse of Cassavetes for a few years, we learn a great deal about his artistry and ground-breaking style.