America was in a state of disequilibrium and flux in 1959. Over the preceding decade, an uncontested post-war order had come to dominate, epitomized by suburban sprawl, escalating homeownership, conspicuous consumption and the primacy of the nuclear family. Yet, those values represented unrealistic, vacuous ideals for certain segments of the youth generation. At the close of the decade, new foci of social and cultural power began to coalesce: the nation’s discontents began to assert themselves.
Culturally, 1959 was a tremendous year. Miles Davis released Kind of Blue, Malcolm X articulated a radical racial politics of black “militant separatism,” and Lenny Bruce tackled lewd and taboo topics on primetime television.[1] Artists and independent thinkers were addressing the nation’s neuroses directly and unapologetically.
Allen Ginsberg observed in the summer of ’59 that “America [was] having a nervous breakdown…” but he also asserted that this was no cause for alarm, at least among artists and outsiders: “[T]here has been great exaltation, despair, prophecy, strain, suicide, secrecy, and public gaiety among the poets of the city.”[2] If anything, this was a cathartic moment for artists. The cultural shift threatened the immaculate, formulaic narrative of the 1950s —a narrative that pervaded television, Hollywood and, allegedly, mainstream daily life. But it also marked a renaissance for the culturally estranged, whether Bohemian, beatnik, or black male.
Amidst this turbulent culture, John Cassavetes offered Shadows (1959), a film shot on-location in New York’s Time Square, MoMA’s sculpture garden and Central Park, with improvisational elements infused into the script and the actors’ performances. Although the film was not improvised per se, it evokes the spirit of a neorealist picture or documentary. Whereas Hollywood narratives are structured around a masculine “coherent ego” whose equilibrium is temporarily disturbed, and subsequently “restored,” Cassavetes rejects such plot-driven devices [3]. Instead, he elaborates the worlds of characters whose names are shared by the actors who play them.
Internal dramas and peripheral conflicts converge on three siblings: Benny, a light-skinned deviant juvenile and musician; Hugh, his much darker older brother, who is unable to secure serious musical gigs due to his race; and their sister Leila, a coquettish girl who ultimately reveals her naiveté and vulnerability. Much of the conflict stems from Benny and Leila’s lighter complexions, which allow them to navigate the mainstream space of white America, internalize racial hatreds, and turn against people darker than themselves — even while they remain emotionally close to Hugh. But what is crucial about the film is its level of nuance, achieved through silent dialogues via close-ups, and idiosyncratic speech patterns. Cassavetes is “not afraid to create an inarticulate character,” and this lack of anxiety about conforming a character to an ideal persona is what sets his work apart as strikingly realist and distinct from mainstream Hollywood.
John Cassavetes’ film Shadows explores issues of race relations, familism, and gender equality through the intimate space of characters’ minds. Internal conflict and mental perturbation dominate the film, so that subtle indicators of psychic tension often take priority over blatant displays of conflict and violence. Indeed, aggression and passion, whether in the form of masculine roughhousing in an alleyway or Leila’s precocious advances toward Tony at the literary party, provide insights into each character's emotional instability.
On the narrative level, Ben accompanies Tom and Dennis in their perpetual and vacant pursuit of women in diners and clubs. The three men seek out ladies who are apparently equally disinterested in relationships. Tom implies that the females' behavior encourages superficial, short-lived romantic encounters: “You want to get picked up, don’t you?” But If Benny is portrayed as a transient cool cat, maneuvering the neon urban jungle and seeming to transcend racial identities (in different contexts he appears more or less African-American), Cassavetes suggests an overlooked level of depth to his persona. This complexity is especially evident on the level of form, as in the iconic composition in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. The shot evokes Ben's introjective mind or spirit, eliciting our empathy for a character who habitually seeks physical intimacy with women prior to emotional discourse. Whereas Ben silently contemplates a single work, Tom dismisses the whole collection as a series of artifacts testifying to the hypocrisy of academia. For Tom, the artworks merely serve to reinforce inflated intellectual egos: the garden signifies a place “for a lot of creeps trying to show off what they know.” Yet, Tom morphs into a similarly detestable intellectual bigot when he accuses Dennis of knowing “nothing” and asserts his own mental superiority (“I went to college, Dennis”). Tom’s relentless belittling is visually accentuated by his dominant height. Though Dennis wears the trench coat, his small stature and strong New York accent endow him with a juvenile quality, as do his vague appraisals of the works (“He’s a statue”). Dennis at least comes to terms with his lack of insights, whereas Tom persists in his blind self-righteousness. The animosity persists until their moods spontaneously shift and harsh language is replaced with frenzied laughter and seemingly authentic bonding over the voluptuous "Standing Woman" by Gaston Lachaise.
A similarly sudden reconciliation is later enacted by Hugh and Benny, and ultimately by Hugh and Rupert; all three resolutions testify to the transient nature of conflict and moods in the film. Prior to the resolution between Tom and Dennis, tight compositions and the telephoto lens collapse the space of the sculpture garden, heightening the sense of antagonism. Two bronze sculptures (a nude and an abstract piece) in the mid-ground divide the frame roughly in two, momentarily allocating "territory" to each man. The nude leans forward slightly, as though enraptured with their conversation, and the diagonal slant of the abstract form mimics her curvature. Long shots in the sculpture garden inter-cut with the tight, low-angle shots of the men, optically diminish Dennis. He seems comically small when Tom scales the bridge, elevated just a few feet off the ground. Even in the least constrained shots (camera pans that punctuate the garden scene), looming trees and flat concrete building facades heighten the impression of enclosure.
During the altercation, Ben withdraws from the dynamic. He is subsequently shot in profile, in front of a carved stone face whose eye sockets, defined brows, and slightly frowning lips seem to represent rounded caricatures of his own features. Cassavetes provides a confrontation of graphic visages. A strange indigenous quality pervades the image of man and his nonliving alternate. It is made all the more bizarre by its modern environmental context — the apartment buildings, just behind the brick walls of the tranquil garden space. Tom’s berating voice (“You’re nothing but an ignorant slob”) further undercuts the sense of epiphany etched on Ben’s expressive features. The juxtaposition of the visually serene, introspective, daringly primordial image with Tom's antagonistic language, imparts an unsettling atmosphere. It's as though we've ventured into the intimate space between dialogues, a realm largely ignored by conventional Hollywood.
Conflict between people has traditionally served to forward the plot in narrative cinema. Yet, Cassavetes adopts a decidedly different goal in conveying the transient moods, clashes, and ritual battles between friends, relatives, and acquaintances in Shadows. Rather than exposing power dynamics, social structures, or discrimination, interpersonal conflict primarily functions to reveal what is inconsistent or inauthentic about the individual. Moreover, these clashes —even when they play out against the vivid, magnetic, and external landscapes of New York City— are fundamentally about intimate encounters. They range from vacuous, superficial, and fleeting (like the dates with countless women in restaurant booths) to genuine and nourishing (as in Hugh and Rupert’s conversation in Penn Station at the end of the film).
Whenever Ben and his crew meander through the city space, flattened anonymous figures, graphic signs, reflective windows, and vehicles constitute a dynamic background. The impression is wholly impersonal. For instance, the masher assault on Lelia occurs under a multiplicity of bright lights, movie posters, and shop windows. That is, it plays out in full view and elicits little response from the crowds. Aside from Cassavetes' chivalrous cameo, the assault goes largely unnoticed and unpunished. Though this urban landscape is neither overtly hostile nor strictly bifurcated along race, gender or generational lines, there is evidence of increasing atomization and loneliness amidst the crowds.
Taking this external landscape as the basis for his cinematic “improvisation,” Cassavetes might have encountered problems while addressing social inequality, hostility, housing discrimination, or miscegenation law. But Shadows never devolves into a didactic montage about victimized groups. Cassavetes refuses to demean his characters with pity. Instead, he explores universal problems of authenticity, agency, and identity, allowing Ben, his sister Lelia, and his brother Hugh to possess personalities neither completely wholesome nor wholly flawed. No single figure explicitly emerges as the dominant or "lead" role.
Ray Carney has observed that “[w]hile Hollywood melodramatically externalizes characters’ emotional states, writing them in ten-foot-high letters…to maximize their visibility, the drama in Cassavetes’ work is internalized to the point of being almost subliminal.”[4] The director’s capacity to evoke conflicted personas, ambiguous relationships, and dynamic psychological landscapes culminate in a brilliantly arresting visual spectacle. Cassavetes does not resort to the grotesque or the abnormal, yet there is something profoundly distinctive about the world he constructs. He manages to incorporate conventional spaces, conflicts, relationships, and roles in a completely unconventional, almost surreal manner. Temporal transitions and connections between characters seem smooth and convincing; yet, critics have widely acknowledged the episodic nature of film. It occurs almost as a series of vignettes, each extraordinarily pleasurable to watch and an exceedingly truthful portrayal of what it is like to be human. That is, to experience and to deny prejudices; to project an ingenuously constructed self-image (Leila); to feel isolated, undervalued, or exploited (Hugh and Ben); to share in the common renewal of laughter; to make oneself vulnerable to another.
[1] Fred Kaplan, “1959: Sex, Drugs and Datsuns,” New York, Vol. 42, No. 20 (8 June 2009), pp. 38-43.
[3] Maria Viera, "The Work of John Cassavetes: Script, Performance Style, and Improvisation." Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 42, No. 3, Problems in Screenwriting (Fall 1990), pp. 34-40.
[4] Carney, Raymond. The Films of John Cassavetes : Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
