Shadows (1959 film)
- Ben Carruthers: Ben
- Lelia Goldoni Lelia
- Hugh Hurd: Hugh
- Anthony Ray: Tony
- Dennis Sallas: Dennis
- Tom Reese Tom
- David Pokitillow: David
- Rupert Crosse: Rupert
Shadow is a completely improvised independent film of the American director John Cassavetes from the year 1959.
Action
The film tells the story of three African-American brothers Ben, Lelia and Hugh, which move in the New York jazz and Beatnikszene. Be shown especially their everyday experiences and problems with racism and relationships. So Lelia example left by her white boyfriend Tony due to mutual prejudices, Hugh tried with moderate success as a jazz singer and the unemployed Ben hangs out with his best white friends around while he dreams of a career as a trumpeter. The film has an episodic structure.
Background
John Cassavetes directorial debut in 1959 turned shadow with a very low budget of about $ 40,000. All dialogs and actions of the film are improvised, the actors are laymen or fellow students of the director that occur under their real names. Thus, the performance of the actors receives an unusual authenticity and truthfulness. The waiver of studio recordings contributes to this realistic atmosphere. It was shot with a 16 mm camera, Cassavetes had their handling of Robert Bresson get shown. Cassavetes said about his way of working: "If I make a movie, then I 'm more interested in the people who work with me, as for the film, as for the cinema. "
Technically and content stopped producing a revolution in the former film industry dar. shade provided both for the emergence of independent or experimental film, as well as for the development of blaxploitation cinema a significant contribution. Never before had a (white ) director so openly engaged with the problems and the daily life of blacks in modern American society.
Among the directors who were influenced by shade include Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol and Spike Lee. Historically, the film work is often compared to Jean -Luc Godard's Breathless, which was created at the same time and was the starting point of the French Nouvelle Vague.
Shadow exists in two different versions. Cassavetes shot the first film in 1957 and showed him several times in the New York underground cinema Paris Theatre. The audience reaction has been mostly negative. The avant-garde filmmaker and journalist Jonas Mekas was impressed by the film, however, so much that he dedicated his four articles in the Village Voice and John Cassavetes Independent Film awarded the first Award for his performance. The citation read: " Cassavetes is marked" shadow succeeded " to break out of conventional patterns and traps and restore original freshness of the situations and the atmosphere of the New York nightlife were captured alive [ The film ] breathes an immediacy that the. . today's cinema desperately needs if it is to be a vibrant and contemporary art form. "
Nevertheless, Cassavetes decided to make the film again. In 1959 he prepared a second draft, which he personally preferred and which earned him several awards ( see below). Mekas, however, called the " remake " as commercially and pulled his originally positive judgment back applied. The first version was over 40 years long thought to be lost in the subsequent period. Only in 2002 a copy of the film was rediscovered.
John Cassavetes wife Gena Rowlands in the film has a brief appearance as a party guest, as well as the Bobby Darin in his first film role, which later became a well-known actor and composer.
Criticism
" An authentic-looking study of the behavior of blacks in a white society. Young people made the film without a script and studio in New York, often with spontaneous dialogue, as a kind of " improvisation " which strives for a rejection of the rules of Hollywood cinema. "
" Wants to play The lifestyle of a placeless youth that seeks to orient itself, is enormously vulnerable and bore the vulnerability by force - as the theme for the sensational American film of that era. The film was placed at his appearance in connection with comparable movies of European awakening, the British Free Cinema and the Nouvelle Vague. "