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I love you. I love you.
I love you.
When I heard those words spit out at the light-skinned Lelia Goldoni during John Cassavetes breakthrough film "Shadows" I couldn't help but mutter under my breath: "Oh, bullshit." The scene, amateurishly romantic, has Lelia finding herself at the disposal of another white, bohemian male looking to get laid. What the lad doesn't know is that Lelia is actually black.
That scene where the revelation shines through is what anchors Cassavetes' debut film, and in many ways (like its raw unchoreographed camera movements) becomes the benchmark for the American drama in the decades to come. Jonathan Rosenbaum, the film critic for the Chicago Reader, hosted a screening and lecture at the Gene Siskel Film Center earlier tonight, to a packed crowd, and revealed to us that the final released version of the film (from 1959) was in fact a second draft; the first was shot without sound, and other tecnical problems, largely due to its improvisational creation. That elusive singular original print was in the hands of Boston University's Ray Carney a few years back, but that stirred up some heat with the Cassavetes estate.
No matter. The "Shadows" film that students of cinema have come to discover is a largely imperfect film, but has some solid nuggets of narrative discourse and unconventional protagonists that have played a large part in replacing the Jimmy Stewarts in today's cinema with the Ryan Gosling's of "Half Nelson" and the Sean Penn's of "She's So Lovely" (another Cassavetes screenplay coincidentally). The timing of the film's release with the civil rights movement is impeccable and what's more impressive is how the film really evades the topic altogether; all of the tensions of race and the melting pot atmospheres of the nightclubs/bars and New York City in general are emulated through the rich leads of the film--Lelia, Ben Carruthers & Hugh Hurd--who tug and pull with their own doubts of status quo and the feeling of being content.
"Shadows" is that small, messy argument that people have with each other when their idea of what is right is threatened or opposed. And just because you might be proven wrong, it doesn't mean your aspirations weren't right.
Comments
"Shadows" is a strange one. It definitely is a breakthrough, but also a mystery. Supposedly, the original cut that Carney has is much more raw (and definitely has dialogue, though most done post production as Cassavettes had no idea what he was doing at first), and is 90% improvised. At the end of the film it says something along the lines of "This is a work of improv," which is somewhat false in the second cut. Cassavettes often recut his films after release because he felt they were too commercial, and "Shadows" is said to be one of the most radical changes. Supposedly more than half of it was rewritten and is scripted, defeating somewhat the original purpose. It is still an amazing work which bascially jumpstarted the original independent movement in America, but the original cut is among the holy grail of film fans along with the original cut of "Magnificent Ambersons," "The Other Side of the Wind," and "Buckaroo Banzai 2." For a great Cassavettes reference check out the Scorsese approved "Accident Genius" and the Criterion Collection 5 disc Cassavettes set. You may also want to check out "Husbands," which to me, is a masterwork.
Posted by: Uknown | February 10, 2008 02:16 AM