Cinéastes de notre temps : John Cassavetes (1968)

"Cineastes de Notre Temps" is a French TV program that interviewed Cassavetes in '65 while he was making Faces and then again in '68 after it had been screened. The first interview finds him in a playful mood as he jokes about making a musical of Crime and Punishment. In the second interview he claims that he's the worst director but tries to create an environment that allows the actors to express themselves honestly. — Cubist, IMDB review



Picked up by the studios, Cassavetes made Too Late Blues then A Child is Waiting, which was Judy Garland’s last appearance on the big screen. The film did not appeal to the producer Stanley Kramer who had it re-edited against his director’s wishes. Cassavetes was done with studios. (…)


(…) Far from the Hollywood system, he made independent movies with his wife, actress Gena Rowlands, who he married in 1953, and his friends. The brilliant result was Faces. (…)


(…) Without having a definite subject at the start, Cassavetes’ creative spirit was in full swing. Ideas piled up. The first draft was 265 pages and only laid out half the film. Cassavetes feared it would last 10 hours and he started making the film with 10,000 dollars. (…)


(…) In 1965, when Labarthe visited him in Los Angeles while he was editing, he was full of hope: “It’s one of the drawbacks of low-budget movies, made with non-professionals, but we prefer it that way (…) having the freedom. We don’t know if it’s any good. But it’s worth a year with no salary to say something. If we don’t have fun, we die… Laughing in the face of tragedy. Being able to film joy. It’s so much better than all the worries (politics, religion) that waste our time.” (…)


(…) Cassavetes’ films would never be political. He even totally ignored the Vietnam War and the protests it sparked. Cassavetes’ aim was to “avoid self-censorship and find an inner truth. To do that means working on a subject whose truth is a little beyond us.” (…)


(…) Six months of shooting, three years in post-production and a house mortgaged for a result unique in the history of cinema. Thierry Jousse described it like this: “A hand-held camera always moving, following the actors’ movements, seems to grope its way along, feverishly searching for faces and bodies in long sequence shots. It is not isolated but included in the action. The editing brings another type of freer movement, giving a sense of telescoping. We start with an actor’s vague movement, but then suddenly change angles. There are very fast panoramic shots, spasmodic series of close-ups with no continuity and inserts.” — Jean-Luc Lacuve, Dissidenz.com










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