Shadows

In the end credits of "Shadows", after we read 'directed by John Cassavetes', some white letters on the screen can be seen: "The film you have just seen is improvised", they say. I am always pursuing the fact that words... Full review

I had never seen a film by John Cassavetes up until two years ago, when I first saw THE KILLING OF A Chinese BOOKIE in a Berlin cinema, which I found interesting, to put it diplomatically, but not so special,... Full review

It ends with the declaration that "the film you have just seen was an improvisation"-at once making you feel like an idiot for thinking an improvisation was an good movie, and astounded at Cassavetes' genius...once again. Of course, Cassavetes told... Full review

John Cassavette's decided as his first film, obviously as one shot on a shoestring in New York, to not even have a script with dialog, and delivers a 1959 feature equivalent of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm- all the actors... Full review

1959 was a landmark in the world of film. Several great directors of the classic era were releasing career capping classics that ranked among their best. Just a look at the titles is instructive, Hitchcock's North By Northwest, Billy Wilder's... Full review

This is a great movie. Like it was made yesterday. Punk, beat in sensibility. About young people struggling on the fringes.But I am mainly writing to mention that a guy named Ray Carney just wrote an astonishing book about the... Full review

Like all Cassavetes, Shadows makes every movie in recent memory seem irrelevant to your life and how to live it. The theme of 1959's Shadows centers around race and its effects on relations between men and women. As in life,... Full review

1st watched 8/26/2001 - 8 out of 10 (Dir-John Cassavetes): Well-done early independent film by Cassavetes introduced a style that was much different than what Hollywood shows it's audience. This movie also introduced some very taboo subjects, especially the actual... Full review

In 1959, came two films named Breathless and Shadows that would have an impact on World Cinema. The former would begin a new era in French Cinema called the French New Wave. The latter would change the face of Independant... Full review

What is there to say about an anti-establishment film that was produced in a time of such colourless void, social indifference and authoritarian contentment. Cassevettes first major independent film was not an instant box office success and still has not... Full review

And, if Shadows ultimately feels like a first film -....The score is excellent, and perfectly punctuates the free from, improvisational performances in the film..... ... Full Review

It won't appeal to people who like movies to be smooth and polished....Norman McLaren has been producing a series of brilliant animated films for more than 20 years, for example.....is has an interesting use of improvisation and a couple of nice, true scenes..... ... Full Review

The low-key, natural performances are dramatically offset by the mercurial and incandescent Lelia Goldoni, the emotional heart of the film. In Cassavetes's inventive and iconoclastic hands, both the content and form of American film underwent a radical transformation. ... Full Review

With its story of miscegenation, the movie could easily have become strident or preachy, but Cassavetes imbues even the least sympathetic characters with dignity and humanity, and his awkward emotional truths still seem contemporary. In its final version Shadows is a perfect example of form following content ... Full Review

Shadows is set in the hip world of 1950s New York, and the film's sketchy structure is itself very jazzy. But, mostly, the action is more mundane - guys playing cards, picking up girls, hanging out in bars and coffee shops, going to parties, and fighting in alleyways. ... Full Review

By Barbara Hoffert -- Library Journal, 11/1/2009 Farebrother, Rachel. The Collage Aesthetic in the Harlem Renaissance. Ashgate. Dec. 2009. 226p. ISBN 978-0-7546-6198-6. $99.95. King-Hammond, Leslie. ... Full Article

Beat generation espoused a rejection of mainstream American values, and John Cassavetes's Shadows feels like a relic from that movement, with its improvisatory bebop jazz feeling, cameras in the street, method-style performances, frustration about accepted social norms, and an interracial... ... Full Article

"Cassavetes is a place," Jon Voight remarks in A Constant Forge , a 2000 documentary that rounds out Five Films , a box set of movies directed by John Cassavetes. ... Full Article

Shadows was John Cassavetes' first directorial effort. Like his later critically acclaimed films Faces and Husbands, Cassavetes fills the screen with probing, unflattering closeups. Unlike his other films, however, Shadows zips along at 87 minutes, avoiding the pitfall of putting... ... Full Article

After his pioneering independent film Shadows (1960), actor/writer/director John Cassavetes made his major studio directorial debut with this gritty, low-key drama about jazz musicians. Bobby Darin plays John "Ghost" Walefield, a pianist who scuffles from gig to gig with his... ... Full Article

Long before Hollywood studios sold "independent" films to the masses and digital video filled the screen with directionless angst, independent cinema had a purpose and a master -- John Cassavetes. ... Full Article