Shadows **** (1959, Hugh Hurd, Leila Goldoni, Ben Carruthers, Anthony Ray, Dennis Sallas, Tom Allen, Rupert Crosse, David Jones) – Classic Movie Review 5754

A young orphaned African-American family battles to survive in Manhattan. Jazz player Hugh (Hugh Hurd) struggles to make a dollar or two singing in low bars; his sister Leila (Leila Goldoni) joins the phony art world and has her first fling with Tony (Anthony Ray); his hipster younger brother Benny (Ben Carruthers) is a slacker, loafing with his buddies until they are embroiled in a street rumble. Rupert (Rupert Crosse) is Hugh’s agent, who seems to be alone in believing in him.

Writer-director John Cassavetes’s brilliant, influential, semi-experimental 1959 American independent movie Shadows (his director debut) had most of its dialogue improvised for the camera by the cast and the director after its New York theatre improv sessions by members of the Variety Arts Studio, whose director was Cassavetes. It was shot on the streets of New York with a 16 mm handheld camera and the crew were Cassavetes’s class members or volunteers.

Starkly shot in black and white by Erich Kollmar on hand-held 16mm then blown up to 35 mm, and with a tremendous jazz score from the legendary Charlie Mingus, it was the winner of the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1960.

Shot for only $40,000, it is technically quite shaky but still hugely impressive as film, and it is immensely important for cinema historically as a landmark of American independent cinema.

Cassavetes said: ‘Shadows will always be the film I love the best simply because it was the first one.’

Cassavetes and his wife Gena Rowlands appear only in uncredited cameos, he as a pedestrian who saves Lelia from a potential molester, she as a woman in a nightclub audience.

The main cast are Hugh Hurd, Leila Goldoni, Ben Carruthers, Anthony Ray, Dennis Sallas, Tom Allen [Tom Reese], Rupert Crosse, David Pokitillow, Victoria Vargas, Jacqueline Walcott and David Jones [Davey Jones]. Greta Thyssen appears as Girl at Party.

All the characters share the actor’s first names.

Playing siblings, Carruthers and Goldoni were married in real life.

Shadows was controversial as it showed an unmarried couple in a post-coital position and showed a young woman seeking sex.

Cassavetes screened a finished 78-minute version of Shadows in 1957, but after adverse reaction to it, he used part of its original negative for the 1959 version, which he re-shot with different actors. Professor Ray Carney of Boston University discovered a pristine 16 mm copy of the 1957 version in 2002, which was seen at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2004 for the first time in 45 years.

Cassavetes went on to direct two studio movies, Too Late Blues (1961) and A Child Is Waiting (1963).

Greta Thyssen died on 6 January 2018, aged 90.

Greta Thyssen, Danish blonde bombshell of the 1950s and 1960s, was born Grethe Karen Thygesen on 30 March 1927 and died on 6 January 2018, aged 90. She launched herself in the United States after winning the Miss Denmark title in 1952.

Ben Carruthers [Benito F Carruthers] (born August 14, 1936 in Illinois) was most notable for his role as Ben in Shadows, his second film. His other films include A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Fearless Frank (1967), To Grab the Ring (1968), The Lost Continent (1968), Riot (1969), Man in the Wilderness (1971) and Universal Soldier (1971). He died of liver failure on September 27, 1983 at the age of 47.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5754

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