We present a component-based, trainable system for detecting frontal and near-frontal views of faces in still gray images. The system consists of a two-level hierarchy of Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers. On the first level, component classifiers independently detect components of a face. On the second level, a single classifier checks if the geometrical configuration of the detected components in the image matches a geometrical model of a face. We propose a method for automatically learning components by using 3-D head models. This approach has the advantage that no manual interaction is required for choosing and extracting components. Experiments show that the component-based system is significantly more robust against rotations in depth than a comparable system trained on whole face patterns.