The films of John Cassavetes - part 2: SHADOWS
August 1st 2010 14:23
SHADOWS - as influential as 'Citizen Kane'
Before I go fourth in talking about Shadows, it’s important that I talk about the circumstances which it came out of. In 1958 Cassavetes had an acting class in New York where he and a handful of his students created an improvised scenario which they landed up filming around the streets of New York and also pre- built sets. People all helped towards making this 16 mm black and white film, Haskell Wexler donated his camera gear, actors Brian Denehy and Seymour Cassell helped out on crew, and they all had to learn on the spot the how-to’s of film making.
The crew was so unexperienced that they found that the sound was completely unusable in editing and they spent months having to re-sync every frame of sound with every frame of picture. One of the crew members was a taxi driver, whose job was to keep an eye out for security or police demanding to see permits, if authority figures were spotted approaching, the gear would have been thrown into the taxi immediately and zoomed off and all was denied. Cassavetes claimed that this was his favourite film because of how idealistic everyone was, and the film in itself was about idealism.
After editing the film, which arrived on the avante-garde scene the same time as Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy and Shirley Clark’s Cool World (Clark was the film maker Cassavetes most wanted emulate at the time) Cassavetes was thoroughly unhappy with the 60 minute result and went on to reshoot it with new scenes which were all scripted and structured, in its 80 minute rewritten format only some of the improvised scenes remain. However both versions contained the title card at the end which read “the film you have just seen was an improvisation”. Cassavetes would then have a stigma attached to him that all of his work was improvised, when in reality it was carefully scripted, and would have his extraordinary ability to direct actors overlooked since everyone thought they were ‘improvising’.
This 80 minute re-edit of Shadows, would become the final, available version. It was released in 1960, along with Allen Baron's Blast Of Silence, which was also recognized as one of the key independent New York films from that pioneering era.
John Cassavetes directing Shadows
Shadows received critical acclaim in Germany and England, however it went unnoticed in the U.S. due to its lack of stars and Lion Films (an England based distributor) lack of knowledge regarding distribution channels in the US. The story involves two brothers and their sister, all three in their late teens and mid twenties, living in New York in the 1950’s, two of these siblings are light skinned enough to pass for white and the film is very much about people who have serious struggles with identity issues as opposed to the popular theory about ‘interracial romance’ being the film’s topic. Since there are no reference to parents in the film, it seems to be just these three living with each other and taking care of one another in their own way, but it's the big brother Hugh who takes on the role as the guardian.
Shot in 16mm black and white, Shadows power to inspire is immediate and is remains as influential as Breathless or Citizen Kane in it's own unique way. Technically rough around the edges, Shadows hits notes of spontaneity and energy that most films for the next fifty years would never come close to along with it's groundbreaking and effecting moments. It's hyper-real honesty and astonishing emotional truth has a free falling style which stems from the loose dialogue and jazz score by Charlie Parker.
Martin Scorsese, Mike Leigh and Ingmar Bergman have cited Shadows as a big influence in their work. To paraphrase Jim Jaramusch, "when you watch a great film you hope to learn about structure, performance, camera work but when you watch Cassavetes – you have forgetten about all of these thing and you are suddenly learning about humans."
What made the film spectacular was the raw nerve it exposed for the people on screen, you felt like you were standing right next to them as they lived on screen, you felt embarrassed, bored, shocked, sometimes very uncomfortable like you were seeing something that cinema shouldn’t have revealed or wasn’t supposed to be seen.
The first scene you will see in Shadows is a party of young people, guys and girls, in their 20’s, having one hell of a time – shouting, laughing, singing, dancing, playing instruments, being absolutely free, and somewhere in this room of young people is a young man named Benny, he is the ‘try hard’ in the room, wearing a leather jacket and sun glasses, he drifts through this room thrashing around while people bump against him and threaten to influence his ‘James Dean like composure’. He is simply committed to looking ‘cool’ and all he does instead is blend into the wall, disappear into the background as all the fun energy in the room simply reveal him to be a dead beat. This is not a dramatic moment of conflict we are seeing but simply a small mirror being held up to everyone who has ever behaved like this in the past. These sort of moments which result in the audiences awareness of themselves will be the seeds, the starting points for a filmmaker, who probably better than anyone else stripped away the gloss of cinema and used it to let us experience the hyper-real moments that we ourselves feel as we go through life.
I have never experienced another filmmaker who did such a good job of conveying a moment on screen which blurred the lines of you living in that moment yourself. In this case, it’s a moment where Benny’s ‘coolness’ suddenly turns to awkwardness. Benny is one of the siblings who is light skinned enough to pass as white and like everyone else in this film he has decided what type of role he has to play in life, how he fits in and when they finally think they know who they want to be – life gets in the way, that is the constant struggle that all the characters face in this first film.
An interesting moment in the early part of the film is where Benny and his friends are trying to pick up three girls. One of the most striking aspects of how the scene is played out is when these girls begin to ridicule and patronize these three men and they are completely unaware of this because they are so committed to looking like ‘the man’ and only reacting to the idea of how they should be and are completely ignoring the flow of where things are going, which ironically is probably why these girls are patronizing them in the first place.
Later on we are introduced to Benny’s older brother Hugh, and his manager Rupert. Even though these two slightly older men seem to have there feet planted more in reality, there is still something amusing about how his so called manager chooses to represent him. Rupert constantly refers to Hugh as ‘my client’, which is a term usually heard in business offices, not on street corners. In a different way, Hugh and Rupert have their heads as much in the clouds as Benny does.
In Hugh’s case he sees himself as this great artist and the protective older brother. When Benny approaches Hugh for twenty dollars, even though he is essentially begging him, he still tries to make it seem like he is muscling someone out of twenty dollars. Shadows is filled with young characters attempting to play roles in their lives so they can feel like they have a purpose, even the young organiser of the ‘girly line up’ is acting more like he is a high status Broadway producer. The overly optimistic character of Rupert delivers the advice, “just smile and be yourself”, ironically that advice is opposite of where he stands because Rupert may ‘smile’ a lot but that certainly isn’t who he is. Rupert insists on wearing rose coloured glasses and forcing this on everyone else as he grows more bitter and frustrated.
Rupert:"I’ve had it! I’ve had it! I’m busting. I’ve been insulted by these pigs, laughed at and what’s in it for you or for me? If we’re going to be failures then lets do so in our own city or get the hell out".
These stories that characters have built around themselves about who they ‘should’ be is what causes all the problems for them, and only when they run into these problems and it causes conflict can they really move forward in their life. Cassavetes is illustrating how conflict can be a very positive thing, even if it causes characters temporary misery, it is what gets these characters to where they need to be and face the truth.
The most interesting character in the film, in my opinion, is Lelia, the younger sister of Benny and Hugh. What is so endearing about her, is she remains the only person who does not put on a persona – and in turn, she gets treated like a child. Only later when she is hurt by Tony Ray (played by the son of director Nicholas Ray) does she develop a façade of aloofness.
Shadows is a story of what will shape these young people into who they will become. The film is filled with playfulness as it examines the consequences of living your life straight from your emotions verses living them from your intellect. In fact the difference between Cassavetes films and most others are that the conflict in the film simply is a product of conflicting point of views in characters. A character like David (representing intellectualism), who seems to have a relationship with Lelia that borders more on the side of platonic, is too cautious and brotherly around her and loses her to Tony Ray. Lelia, who is a slave to her emotions, gets swept away by Tony’s advances, resulting in overwhelming consequences.
It's this seduction scene filled with false ‘I love you’s’ and hammy displays of forced affection on Tony Ray’s part that is Shadows highlight. I imagine it's frank portrayal of taking advantage of a naive teen age girl must have been shocking at the time, but the the way it's been filmed has a potency that makes the scene startling to this day. The sound track is absolutely bare, no music or background noise – we are alone in this room with these two in an intensely intimate scene which feels so wrong as we watch Lelia being taken advantage of as Tony attempts to arouse and liquor her up. It is so honest that we feel a shock of familiarity - a feeling that Cassavetes would become a master of in later films.
Watch this scene from Shadows, shot in 1958 - quite astonishing
| 101 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
you are suddenly learning about humans - nice one, Jim!
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
which of the great man's films have you seen Matt?
Hey Dave - thanks for reading - Shadows is more than just a time piece, it's a brilliant and ground breaking film which broke a lot of rules and established many new elements.
All film makers who call them selves independents owe a tremendous debt to the man, many of these people have never seen his films either and Shadows is a great place to start.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by ShaunK
Screen Adventure
My parents got me Criterion Collection box set for my 20th birthday many many years back - definitely a winning present that made me happy to do my chores around the house