SHADOWS (78) (second viewing: 74)

Directed by: John Cassavetes (1959)

Starring: Lelia Goldoni, Ben Carruthers, Hugh Hurd, Anthony Ray

The Pitch: Three siblings - black, though two are light-skinned enough to pass for white - search for a meaning in New York City.

Theo Sez: One to see on the big screen - moody, free-ranging images of beatnik New York to the throb of a Mingus score, alternating with very full, lingering close-ups, all of which gets a little lost on video : the sudden cut to an extreme close-up of Goldoni lying on her side, her face filling the entire screen, must be breathtaking in the cinema. That she's close to tears, having recently and painfully lost her virginity, is also rather remarkable - coming just six years after the mere mention of the word "virgin" in a movie caused a sensation - just as Ray's wordless look of surprise and revulsion when he realises she's black (nothing more is needed) should be seen in the context of elaborate message-mongering like THE DEFIANT ONES, made only a year before. Matter-of-factness and (relative) honesty make this a new beginning for American movies, just about balancing its more hilariously dated elements like the hero's hep-cat buddies, picking up chicks though they look, and often sound, like they have wives and mortgages (one went to college, he explains, but he didn't dig those "supercilious professors"). It's the most joyous Cassavetes (that I've seen), going for truth rather than Truth, getting a genuine kick out of its daring and energy, opening with stunning suddenness in the midst of a jazz club - though also the most hesitant, not entirely sure how far it can go, ending with rather pat (albeit improvised) resolutions for all three protagonists. Probably one of the most influential films of the last 40 years ; in itself, sometimes revelatory and sometimes self-conscious - but the images sing. [Second viewing, around 10 years later: Wildly unconvincing in its casting, in its claim to being improvised, in the mixed-up musician's buddies [see above], in the notion that this kid would be hanging out with these buddies - but the energy's still there and of course it's convincing where it matters, in deflowered Goldoni ("I never thought it would be so awful") and that breathtaking scene on the bed, in the boyfriend's racism bubbling to the surface (it's a gag reflex more than anything, which seems accurate) and just in being what it is, a snapshot of a certain artistic tendency in late-50s New York. Strange how terrible the jokes are, though, given the general exuberance. Could it be that humourless - rather than intense or neurotic - is really the defining Cassavetes adjective?]