The Megaphone (Georgetown, Tex.), Vol. 62, No. 24, Ed. 1 Friday, March 21, 1969 Page: 3 of 8
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THE MEGAPHONE
PAGE THREE
FACES. Send Your
Parents to See It
BY IAN ANDERSON
The McGill (Montreal) Daily
(CPS)-The greatest thingaljout
FACES is that the people on the
screen are all in the audience
watching the film - take a look
.around, when the lights go on.
There are at least two different
modes of criticizing a film. First
the film can be seen in the contest
of the history of film as adynamic
process. This is just to say that
FACES is not an avant-garde film
in any real sense of investigating
the possibilities of the medium.
There are no clear advancements
in montage, no jump cuts, no weird
lenses. If you are in search of the
, American Godard, Cassavetes is
not he - not yet anyway - but of
course it took Lester three films
before he could get the money to
make HOW I WON THE WAR.
The second approach to film crit
icism is viewing the film on its own
merits and forgetting whether the
content of the new medium is or is
not the old medium: that is - is
FACES a filmed novel, the Madame
Bovary of the sixties? On its own
terms FACES is a social realist
psychodrama. In presenting the de-
cadence and futility of middle class
America the film succeeds super-
bly.
It is a long day's journey into
the existence of middle class mid-
dle-aged Los Angeles couple whose
marriage is on the rocks.
There are two intertwining psy-
chodramas: one - the husband and
his attempt to escape at a call
girl's apartment; two - the wife
and her friends who pick up a young
gigolo at a discotheque. The hus-
band sleeps with the call girl
(played by Cassavetes' wife Gena
Rowlands - it's cheaper that way).
He returns home refreshed the
next morning only to find that the
wife has slept with the beach boy
and taken an overdose of sleeping
Nelson Touring
Area Contests
George Nelson of the music fac-
ulty in the School of Fine Arts is
filling several engagements as ad-
judicator and clinician for various
high schools featured in contests
«during March and April.
The engagements include Ennis
high school, Mar. 11-12; Temple,
Region VIII solo and ensemble con-
test; Mar. 15; Ennis Contest Fes-
tival from Region III; Brenham,
Apr. 3; Belton, Apr. 14, 16; and
Killeen, Apr. 21.
Joining the Southwestern Uni-
versity music faculty in 1958,
Nelson is Associate Professor of
, Instrumental Music Education and
Director of the Southwestern Band.
A graduate of Southwestern Uni-
versity with the Bachelor of Music
Education degree and the Master of
Music degree from the University
of Texas, Nelson has done grad-
uate study at Eastman School of
Music, University of Colorado, and
the University of Texas.
pills. She recovers thanks to the
beach boy's fear of the cops (he
saves her himself). The husband
returns, the youth leaves and the
couple is left in their self-made
Sartrian hell.
Sound less than exciting? But you
do get involved, overwhelmed, by
the black and white images, the
jerky hand-held camera work, the
tight indoor sets, and the constant
laughter. The music of sick laugh-
ter is the soundtrack. Cassavetes
does not use anything else except
when people play a record or, just
at the end, when a blues song fades
over the put-on emotions that fill
most of the film.
Cassavetes is well aware of
jokes and their relationship to the
unconscious. The bad jokes, the
sour humor, impregnates all the
lives of the characters even in bed;
until you can hardly stand it. The
people in the film couldn't talk
otherwise; they have nothing to say;
their few stabs at philosophy -
able" ring more hollow than their
laughter. Baudelaire said laughter
was always at someone else's
expense. Cassavetes used the
violence of laughter adeptly.
The essential discovery Cas-
savetes makes in FACES is night-
marish but not new. It is that peo-
ple in America are totally inter-
changeable. Early on in the film
he shows a pair of old college bud-
dies, now captains of industry,
drunk and reliving their past. Quite
shortly thereafter they are rein-
carnated in a pair of traveling
salesmen. The call girl is the wife;
the gigolo differs from the husband
only in his youth - not in his ideas
or his emotions.
The main thing that troubles
about the film is that it’s some-
what in the same bag as THE GRAD-
UATE and WHO'S AFRAIDOF VIR-
GINIA WOOLF? It is a film with-
out a dialectic, without trans-
cendent possibilities. Dealing with
“Petulia," Lester always makes
you aware of the society around-
of the war, of the blacks, of the
Mexicans, not because the bour-
geois he is dealing with are parti-
cularly aware of what's happening,
but just because it is happening.
Cassavetes, like Nichols, never
allows you to see the world outside
the livesofhis characters, even for
a moment. He does not even let
you see the physical world of sun
and sky, except in one shot when
the kid takes off over the roof
tops as the husband returns.
After seeing the WATERS OF.
BANGKOK, the short before the
film in which you never see a sad
peasant in all of Thailand, only
happy smiling faces, I found I
wanted a little reassurance of
other faces. FACES is the sort of
film you should take your parents
to see to punish them. Buy them
the tickets and then take off and
see WEEKEND.
^iday, March 21, 1969
Stop the World! judiciary [lections
Comedy April 17-19
“STOP THE WORLD! I WANT
TO GET OFF!" -- the musical
comedy by Leslie Bricusse and
Anthony Newly that played on
Broadway for 16 months, — will
be playing in the Alma Thomas
Theatre at Southwestern April 17-
19.
Directing the Mask and Wig
Players production will be Robert
W. Schmidt, assistant professor of
drama in the School of Fine Arts.
Tibb Burnett of the physical edu-
cation and drama departments is
the choreographer. Serving as mu-
sical director and vocal director
are George E. Nelson and Lewis
Woodward, respectively, both fac-
ulty members of the School of
Fine Arts.
“STOP THE WORLD!" is a
chronicle of a commonplace man's
entire life, from his birth to his
courtship and shot-gun wedding,
his going to work in his rich, dom-
ineering father-in-law’s business,
his gradual rise to eminence as
an indisutrial tycoon, his getting
elected to Parliament and his ele-
vation to the peer-age- a journerv
through life with some frequent
stops for amorous dalliance. It
is at the end of his life that “Lit-
tle-chap" discovers that he really
loved the wife he neglected and
that he has lost some of the best
things in life in order to succeed.
The cast includes DonGuerrant,
playing “Littlechap," a modern
“Everyman" who rises from pov-
LOUISE TOTH
soprano
DRUSILLA HUFFMASTER
pianist
ANDOR TOTH
violinist
Recital—Thursday, March 27
8 p.m. Theatre
erty to fame, fortune and disil-
lusionment; Catherine Anne Bos-
well, playing the series, of girls
in the life of “Littlechap," her
role including that of his wife
as well as the “other women";
Judy Franze as a daughter of “Lit-
tlechap"; daughter of Mr. and Mrs.
Reynold Frederick Franze, Linda
LaBella as a daughter of “Little-
chap", and the chorus of Patricia
Elaine Rundell, Gail Rivers, Dayle
Diane Hilborn , Helen Anderson,
Melissa Kirkpatrick,Barbara Anne
Turner, and Sara Dianne Harvey.
View From Space
“View From Space" one of
North American Rockwell’s “Man
and His Universe" Specials, will
be rebroadcast in color on Monday,
April 7, 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. EST on
ABC—TV. The Special, telecast on
Feb. 9, 1969, is being brought back
at this prime time due to tremen-
dous interest generated by Apollo
8 and 9 flights and the general cri-
tical acclaim.
Guides for the spectacular com-
posite trip into orbit and around
the earth will be astronauts Frank
Borman and James Lovell, whoor-
bited the moon in Apollo 8, and
Edwin “Buz” Aldrin who describes
his feeling as he stood on Gemini
12's umbilicals and looked down
on earth from a hundred odd miles
above. „
Producer James Benjamin said
the Special concerns itself primar-
ily with what space exploration
means to us in terms of practi-
cal applications such as predict-
ing weather, mapping heretofore
inaccessible areas of the world, lo-
cation of dam sites, mineral de-
posits and natural gas and oil
fields.
“View From Space" is an ABC
News presentation.
Student Judiciary elections will
be held all day Wednesday, March
26 in the SUB and the Commons.
Students will vote for four rep-
resentatives from their class.
Senior candidates are Bonnie
Brunson, Fred Griffin, Everett
Schrum, Jan Westervelt, Karen
Wilkie and Fred Winslow.
Junior candidates are Paul Bell,
Bonnie Hennington, Bob Karr, Kay
Klaveness, Camilla Peel and John
Riley.
Sophomore candidates are Paula
Bellegie, Charlie Hart, Larry Hay-
nes, Sam McFerrin, Margaret
Mings and Gayle Williams.
Did You Hear?
V
CHICAGO (CPS) _ ...that the
Chicago Tribune has just com-
pleted an historic week of pub-
lishing without a single college
protest story in their pages?
The Tribune announced a little
over a week ago that they thought
campus protests were getting en-
tirely too much attention from the
press, and that therefore, to put
these things in proper perspec-
tive, they were not going to men-
tion campus protest for one week!
Patronize
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The Megaphone (Georgetown, Tex.), Vol. 62, No. 24, Ed. 1 Friday, March 21, 1969, newspaper, March 21, 1969; Georgetown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth634856/m1/3/?rotate=270: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Southwestern University.