Before Easy Rider, there was Shadows; before Dennis Hopper, there was John Cassavetes. Widely acknowledged as being at the vanguard of American independent film, Shadows relates the story of a doomed interracial love affair played out in low-rent apartments, on the streets, and in the jazz clubs of fifties New York. Made on a shoestring budget, featuring a largely unknown cast, the film was much praised for its improvisational style, despite being very tightly scripted, in fact. The first feature of screen actor, turned director, John Cassavetes, Shadows has an edgy authority, thanks partly to the snatched intimacy of cinematographer, Erich Kollmar’s hand-held camerawork. Coupled with a partial score from legendary jazz bassist Charles Mingus, the film’s preponderant use of natural lighting and real locations, at the time, was revolutionary to cinema audiences raised on the saccharine artifice of Hollywood. Cassavetes’ freewheeling approach, grounded in improvisational theatre was echoed in France by the nouvelle vague, where Cahiers critics, Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard, were also taking their first steps as film-makers. (There is a an argument – to be made elsewhere – that 1959 is something of a Year Zero for independent cinema.) A hit with audiences and critics at the London Film Festival, Shadows was also awarded a Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival, but fared less well in the US, where it failed to secure a home distributor. The film did find some admirers though, notably photographer Robert Frank among them, as well as spurring a young Martin Scorsese to make his own debut feature Who’s That Knocking At My Door? which owes an acknowledged debt to Cassavetes.
Leeds audiences will have the chance to judge for themselves when Shadows is screened, as part of the 30th Leeds International Film Festival, at Leeds College of Music on Friday 4th November at 19.00.
For more information, visit leedsfilm.com
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