Lynn Carlin

In Faces (1968), Lynn Carlin's Maria Forst is angry, but the anger does not tell us what she wants to happen next. Opposite John Marley as Richard, she gives us little chance to settle into comfortable sympathy for either spouse. We found their exchanges wearing, because both actors make the need to be understood clear while making the couple difficult to listen to. That discomfort is worth sitting through, though some of the arguments go on too long. Carlin lets Maria be unpleasant without making her hurt seem less real.

This was Carlin's film debut, directed by John Cassavetes, and we would start with the assurance of the acting rather than the novelty of a newcomer. She learnt her lines and worked through repeated takes for Cassavetes, details worth remembering when the exchanges seem to happen without preparation. She does not offer a neat explanation for Maria's behaviour. Nor does she make it easy to dismiss her as unreasonable and stop paying attention. The frustration remains, but so does our interest in the woman causing it.

The later films kept returning her to wives and mothers, often under emotional strain. In Miloš Forman's Taking Off (1971), she plays Lynn Tyne, a mother searching for her runaway daughter. Forman worked through on-set direction without a script, a different approach from the learned lines and repeated takes of Faces. Deathdream (1974) pairs her with Marley again, as his wife in Bob Clark's horror film. The change of genre still left her in a familiar domestic role.

By Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), she was voicing Nell, a maternal starship computer, so even science fiction found a use for her as a mother. It is a peculiar extension of a persistent casting habit. We would be wary of letting that habit decide what her acting amounts to. Start with Faces, with some patience for arguments we would have walked away from in life.