Is "Faces" a film within a film? The opening segment shows people going into a screening room, and it appears that what we see from that point on is what they are seeing, but we never return to this screening room. So, how about it? Why was this detail included? It's different in a film like "The Royal Tenenbaums," because the film being a book allowed for more structure. But I'm not sure about this one.
its late, but if you happen to get this, here's what i think. i think that the intro scene is set up to yes create the feel of a "film within a film" but to cleverly tell you what youre going to see next. The guy says "its an impressionistic document that shocks" assumingly referring to the film itself and one man says "it's strong and it's attractive".
the best part in the intro is when dickie says "it better be better than the last one" referring to cassavetes's last film "Shadows" which turned out to be a complete flop. i'm assuming its for comedy.
Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.
- Andy Dufresne
Yeah, it just takes me out of the film once in a while because within the reality of the film, it's not "really" happening. I feel the same way about "The Royal Tenenbaums."
shareIt is an interesting thought, but I don't personally think that Cassavetes intended it to be a film-within-a-film. If anything, the situations that follow that scene are more to the reality of their lives than the screening room scene, where everybody applies their appropriate, ahem, faces -- Richard plays the cocksure, overly-confident businessman (while the reality of the situation is far from that), the film-makers are all sycophantic, etc. In other words, I think that the scene exists to provide an intentional contrast to the rest of the film.
Actually, Cassavetes' previous film was "A Child Is Waiting". "Shadows", while not successful in the US (partially due to the fact that it could not find a US distributor), was successful in Europe. The two films that followed "Shadows", however, were not successful at all, and in particular, Cassavetes thought at the time that his career was over following a very public altercation with Stanley Kramer (who re-edited "A Child Is Waiting" without Cassavetes' input), and "Faces" was actually written and shot in response to the Hollywood studio system.
To me, the screening room dialogue is exactly that: a bunch of meaningless, hollow dialogue being thrown around in order to *sell* a film. Every statement that they make about the film smacks of hyperbole -- in fact, they never actually discuss the film that they're about to screen so much as they throw out catchy descriptors of what the film's selling points are supposed to be.