Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

gavin6942 John Cassavetes' jazz-scored improvisational film explores interracial friendships and relationships in Beat-Era (1950s) New York City.How fascinating that the characters briefly discuss existentialism, the thoughts of Jean-Paul Sartre and put the film in the context of the beat generation. Those of us not having lived at the time may not be sure how influential Sartre was in his own day. He certainly still is today (2013), but it is nice to see how he influenced thought and film early on. Can any philosopher today claim to have such potency? Can the average person name a living philosopher?The film itself may not be a Beat film, but the action clearly takes place on the edge of the Beat world. Much of the lingo (like "mad chick") works itself into the story, and there is, of course, the jazz theme.The film is said to be an "improvisation", and one wonders to what degree there was a script and how much was truly improv. All the characters share their names with the actors that play them, making the lines much more blurred than in a strictly script-based acting job. This is not to say there was no acting -- the characters are all incredible.Where this picture excels, though, is with racial issues. We see that racism is often really only skin deep -- a black woman with light skin is seen as white, despite having a black family, raised in a black community, and so on. How much should our skin dictate our identity?Cassavetes successfully worked outside the studio framework, and while there may be a lack of budget and polish, what replaces it is a heart and soul the studio never had (and some might say still does not have today).

mark.waltz If you wish for the days when New York City was not overcrowded, filled with sleaze and more like the movies, then 1959's "Shadows" is not the vision of Gotham for you. This independently made feature from ground-breaking artist John Cassavettes uses real people to act out the drama of a city that in 1959 was no less complicated than it is today, only free of cell phones.With marquees of the Broadway musical "The Most Happy Fella" and the movie "The Ten Commandments" in the background, the lights of Times Square take on a role as a character in the film as much as the actors speaking the often improvised lines. The plot is similar to things you've seen in movies before (Boy wants girl & vice versa, but various obstacles stand in their way), but these people aren't speaking out of the minds of some Hollywood scriptwriter. They are speaking out of the minds of real people. They talk over each other at times, don't often make sense or have a direction in their communication, but it's dialog you can imagine actually hearing on the streets.The original 16mm photography (now re-mastered to 35mm) is rough and at first jarring to get used to. But once you're inside these character's lives, you feel you are on the streets with them, pushing through the crowds as they do. You also know you're not going to be snapping your fingers like the Sharks or the Jets. The editing is jerky, the background music is that of street sounds, and the camera moves like a turning head going back and forth from character to character. It's all a bit claustrophobic at times, but it's all too real. If there was an Off Broadway state of mind for cinema, this would be the quintessential example. Cassavettes' inventiveness paved the way for such future ground breakers as Francis Ford Coppolo, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.As a recommended viewing co-features, take in the more family oriented "The Little Fugitive", "Lovers and Lollipops" and "Weddings and Babies" for a view of New York City that you won't get in the Bowery Boys movies or in "On the Town".

ALauff Seven months after a revelatory viewing of Faces, I finally found a rentable DVD copy of Cassavetes' first feature. Shot on a shoestring in Manhattan and in his acting workshop on ad hoc sets, Shadows was the culmination of months of improvisational rehearsals, in which the (mostly amateur) actors bonded with one another, invented their characters, and polished their techniques to give their filmed performances just the right tenor of spontaneous familiarity. This intimate approach led to some incredibly daring work in Faces—i.e., Seymour Cassel cramming his hands down Lynn Carlin's throat in an attempt to revive her from an overdose—just as the actors' utter conviction here yields blisteringly honest moments like Lelia and Tony's post-coital assessment of their relationship and Ben's revulsion at a black woman's touch as a manifestation of his racial confusion and self-loathing. This is a homemade production in the best sense: the out-of-sync dubbing and sound recording, and the granular cinematography and up-close camera setups, build an immersive atmosphere that perfectly suits Cassavetes' nuanced vision of human relationships as perpetual works in progress, marked by desperate emotional fluctuations and wistful attempts at communication and understanding. Charles Mingus's largely improvised jazz score is an ideal complement to the film's vision of living by the moment, a mantra by which Cassavetes worked and seemingly lived.

kgk_778 slow moving but smart. passes you by as if you lived it. filled with thought provoking Ideas art Race and being cool. that one thing hit me hard was the ideas about the rock n' roll lifestyles. all the performances were improvised i will say it again ALL THE PERFORMANCES WERE IMPROVISED sounds like a gimmick but its not it makes these characters real and like some one you would hang with. this also an amazing thing when you think about how strong the character are in this film. right from the beginning in the title sequence it immediately establish Ben as an outcast by the way he moves though the crowdOkay it breaks down like this if your a person who lives the jazz/rocker lifestyle of cool you will like it if your smart and understand great cinema from total crap you will love it and if your both then it might be you favbut if your none of these then you will probably think its boring and say it doesn't follow "one line" and write a crap review like Ben_Cheshire