Shadows - John Cassavetes Sketches an Independent Revolution

American independent director John Cassavetes’ first film Shadows was released the same year as Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, and though it is significantly less well known than its French contemporary, it is a stunning companion piece to Godard’s revolutionary film. There may be many differences in Godard and Cassavetes’ styles, but the amount of similarities these two films share is an astounding coincidence considering the two directors were unknown to each other and they both were making their first films on different continents. Yet the way they both played with traditional filmmaking techniques from editing to acting to shooting on location, shows that the filmmaking revolution that was about to take place was going to be a global movement.

The French New Wave and films by Godard and Truffaut are famous for their depiction of Paris of the 1960s, and with Shadows, Cassavetes gives us an equally invigorating street view of life in New York City in 1959. It is a real experience to see American cinema freed from the restraints of the studio system and everything that came with it. By financing the film himself, shooting it with friends, and using real locations, Cassavetes film was a precursor to the international film movements that went on to reinvent the language of cinema created in the Golden Age of Hollywood and exchange it for more ‘realist,’ creative, personal and political films.

The film started off as an improvisation project between Cassavetes and his friends and, after two years of work on it, eventually evolved into the more structured and scripted final film that now exists. This filmmaking process, which seems comparable to the way British director Mike Leigh makes all his films, beginning with collaboration and improvisation in early stages before filming a strictly prepared final version leads to some amazingly authentic performances in the style of Marlon Brando and James Dean.

Cassavetes, an actor himself most famous for his role as the husband in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, clearly knows and respects the trade and gets some amazing performances from his cast. In the late fifties and early sixties things were beginning to change, but the godlike figures of big movie stars like Carey Grant, Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, and Katherine Hepburn still loomed large. In Shadows the cast abandons the more theatrical and mechanical style of acting for something much more organic which matches perfectly with the film’s documentary style.

The actor who makes the most of this new stylistic freedom with his performance is Ben Carruthers, giving us someone who feels real, mascule, cool, in a very Brando-esque way. His performance is incredibly physical. Everything from the way he walks to the way he puts on his sunglasses seems true to his character. Even the way he sits in a booth at a restaurant, making himself as small as possible, seemingly trapped in the frame, is essential to understanding his character. 

The narrative style flows beautifully along with the actors' performances. Throwing the Hollywood rule book out the window, the structure of the film has no real beginning, middle, or end. We enter into these characters' lives for a few days. There is some drama that is left completely open, and, before we know it, the film has ended. It has a wonderful, steady flow to it that feels like jazz or poetry. There are some brilliant shots in the film as well as the characters walk through the illuminated, hectic New York streets at night, MoMA’s sculpture garden, or when a man directly and repeatedly punches the camera.

But it is not only the aesthetics and acting style that make the film so unique and groundbreaking, but also the plot. The film follows a family of three young siblings who live together. Hugh is the eldest and supports his brother Benny and sister Lelia. He is also very clearly a black man, the same of which cannot be said for his half-siblings who can both pass as white. The film touches on these themes of race in late 50s America without feeling like it is a prestige film ABOUT race and racism. The title brings to the forefront the issue of skin color and how people are perceived and treated based on how light or dark they are. However, Cassavetes also cleverly sketches his film with subtle interpretations of self loathing, repressed racism, pain, misunderstanding, and acceptance. Race is shown for what it is, a social construct that affects the siblings and each of them react to their understanding of race in very different ways.

Hugh’s identity and sense of self is much clearer than his brother and sister. He is black and he and he and everyone else knows it. He hangs out with black friends and faces the racism of the music performance business head on. Lelia also seems pretty comfortable with her identity, easily interacting with both the white and black worlds. This, however, is complicated when she is seduced by a white man at a party. After a painful first experience making love with him he insists on going to her apartment. When he meets her brother Hugh and realizes her real background his initial response is horribly, embarrassingly offensive. After seeing Hugh and looking at Lelia again he quickly makes an obviously false excuse to go to an appointment to escape the situation. Lelia confronts him and he quickly realizes how hateful his reaction has been and tries to make up for it but is consequently kicked out by Hugh. What makes this sequence so powerful is how emotionally violent it feels without being as tragic or in your face horrible as many other films about African American characters’ lives in the US are. It is a crue example of everyday racism, a painful moment that is but one in a lifetime of reminders that a great part of society looks down on you as if you were lesser than them.

Though the action between Lelia and Tony is perhaps the central conflict, Benny is the heart of the film. He deeply struggles with the reality of his background and is visibly hostile towards his brother for being a constant reminder of where he really comes from. The film opens and closes with Benny and his group of white friends. They completely accept him, but there is something inside of him that keeps him from having a sense of true belonging. This is witnessed through Carruthers magnificent performance, through his gestures, stride, and body language. He seems as if he is trapped in his body against his own will.

Two scenes in particular demonstrate his self hatred, both in awkward flirtatious scenes with girls. In the first scene he seems scared, unworthy, and ashamed of speaking to a white girl in a bar. In the second he is visibly angry towards the black company his brother invited at the apartment. A young black woman tries to get him to join the party, but when she touches him he reacts violently and hits her. In his flat with all these proud, happy black young people he is incapable to forget that he is one of them, and this idea seems to repulse him.

Benny is such a tragic character, and a real revelation for the time period that feels prevalent today despite the time that has passed. The film ends with a bitter sweet shot of Benny crossing the street through ongoing traffic. It is sweet perhaps now in hindsight because it is a brilliant shot of the New York streets of another generation long gone, but bitter because Benny seems to be pushing himself unnecessarily into all this noise and traffic as fast as he can, seemingly uninterested in the danger he has put himself in. It is not to say that he was born into an easy or simple situation as a light skinned black in America, but he seems determined to make his situation even more difficult than it needs to be.

Shadows may not exactly be the American version of Breathless, but it certainly is a living breathing work of art thematically and stylistically that remains as powerful today as it was when it was first released. Cassavetes began it as a project with friends, and, like Godard, ended up showing the world what the future of cinema would look like.