Shadows is a 1959 American independent drama film directed by John Cassavetes about race relations during the Beat Generation years in New York City.
The film stars Ben Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni, and Hugh Hurd as three black siblings, though only one of them is dark-skinned enough to be considered African American.
[1] In 1993, Shadows was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
[3][4] Light-skinned Ben, diffident and awkward, wants to be a jazz trumpeter, but spends most of his time drinking in Manhattan bars and trying to pick up girls with two fellow-idlers, Dennis and Tom.
He is supported by his darker-skinned brother Hugh, a jazz singer who is unable to find much work because of his old-fashioned vocal style.
Recently, she has been under the wing of an older boyfriend, the intellectual David, who encourages her to write and attempts to be helpfully critical of her efforts.
Hugh has some guests over, and a friend urges Lelia to flirt with a gentlemanly black man named Davey.
He vents his frustration about their state of affairs, and, for once, it is Hugh who says some encouraging words to lift Rupert's spirits, instead of the other way around.
When the girls' tough male dates come out of the bathroom, tensions flare, and the two sides take their argument outside, where Ben, Dennis and Tom are badly beaten up.
Tom heads home, and, while Dennis goes to buy some cigarettes, Ben wanders off alone down the nighttime New York City streets.
The classes, listed as "The Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop", were Cassavetes' attempt to counter method acting, which was ascendant in New York theatre and film.
[8] Using student actors from the Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop, shooting started in February 1957 in a largely improvised form.
After they had developed their characters to the point at which they could portray emotion in silence, the actors improvised with more clarity and with a level of truth that Cassavetes found revealing.
[9] Filming took place in various locations, including inside the apartment that Cassavetes shared with his wife Gena Rowlands, and on the streets of New York.
Using a 16 mm camera borrowed from Shirley Clarke, and monochrome film stock, Kollmar was forced to shoot scenes in which the actors could move in any direction they wished, making for unpredictable zoom and focus requirements.
No filming permits were obtained, so the cast and crew were necessarily ready to pack quickly and leave a location.
The microphone was placed by Jay Crecco (who was also an actor in the film), and dialogue was recorded to tape with street noises intruding.
Cassavetes was not available during much of this time; starting in June, he was on location working as an actor first in Saddle the Wind, then in Virgin Island (both 1958).
Three hours of Mingus and his band were recorded, and much of this material was placed in the first version of Shadows, screened in 1958, but almost all of it was removed during the 1959 reworking of the film.
[14] The film was finished late in 1958, printed onto 16 mm stock, and three free screenings were announced by Shepherd on his radio show.
[15][17] A 16 mm print was struck, and the new version was shown on November 11, 1959, at Amos Vogel's avant-garde Cinema 16, on a double bill with the 30-minute beat poetry film Pull My Daisy.
For example, he removed a section in which a muted trumpet replaces the speech of character Tony on the phone, the sound mocking him.
[21] Another removed part involves the Mingus band shouting out a snatch of the gospel song "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" during a scene in which Ben and his friends are recovering from a brutal fight.
In the first version, the fight and Ben's statement appear halfway through the film, following which he is shown doing the same things again, having failed to learn his lesson.
It joined Pull My Daisy and Shirley Clarke's The Connection to establish a new wave of American independent films.