Cassavetes and the Failure of the Counterculture

Two excellent films we have watched recently by John Cassavetes: Shadows (1959) and Faces (1968). Cassavetes provides a singular instance in the U.S. of the kind of experimentalism one normally associates with '60s French filmmakers: jumpy hand-held camera work, long shots, close-ups of the faces of his actors that blot out all else, amazing uses of the screen as a frame. The thing I find most interesting in these films is their early diagnosis of the failure of counterculture liberalism; in the earlier film, the racial integration promised by the beat generation's adoption of African-American culture fails to bring about psychosexual integration; in the later one, politics is repeatedly disdained even as the film's one figure representing youth culture is shown to be capable only of uttering the most banal platitudes, encouraging the other characters to drink with abandon, and dancing. Can't wait to watch more of his films...