Irish Film Institute -SHADOWS

SHADOWS

Director: JOHN CASSAVETES

U.S.A • 1959 • BLACK AND WHITE • 87 MIN.


WITH ITS ROUGH-AND-READY CAMERAWORK, ITS ON-THE-STREETS EXUBERANCE, ITS POETIC RHYTHMS AND MUSICAL ‘LINE’ (THE SCORE IS BY CHARLES MINGUS), SHADOWS EARNED ITS PLACE IN FILM HISTORY FOR REPRESENTING A NEW KIND OF FREEDOM IN THE CINEMA.
What’s surprising about the film today is its dramatic density—and the complex themes which work against that surface exuberance. A racial problem is tied into the first of Cassavetes’ irresolvable family dramas: Lilia (Lelia Goldoni) and her brother Ben (Ben Carruthers) are black, but light enough to ‘pass’ in a white world; their older brother Hugh (Hugh Hurd), a nightclub singer, is undeniably black, and this proof of identity is a source of guilt, pride, confusion, and some of the same identity problems with which Myrtle Gordon will struggle in Opening Night. Since all the world’s a stage, it’s also not surprising to find Hugh beset with what will become familiar professional anxieties, his sense of integrity whittled away by the need to make it and by the pressure of passing time.

Book Tickets

}