So much average

Great Film overall

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I would like to comment on how this movie exposes the lie that only the South had institutional racism, and also from my experience segregation was nationwide, it was not just in the South, this is historical revisionism. One of my first memories is as a child, I'm three years old, my grandmother who was a nurse, I was born in LA. She is holding my hand, and we are going to a Department store in Downtown LA, it has to be 1968..it was the first time I had seen a black person..I was entering the store with my grandmother, and in the corner of my left eye I saw this black figure,(apparently they had a separate entrance) it shocked me I had never seen a black person, or even knew that they existed...my grand mother rushed me into the store, and didn't tell me anything, she tried to act like I didn't see what I saw..in Los Angeles there was segregation of public restaurants, department stores etc..this is the truth..the Watts riots in LA county in 1965..erupted because black people were tired of being refused service in diners,..I didn't learn about this until years later..(they lied to us in school as a child) stores, etc...

Watching John Cassavetes debut film is a strange experience, even if you've seen improvisational films before.The first thing you notice is it's roughness. Right off, it's obvious some of the characters are screwing up their lines. But then you step back from the situation, as you sink deeper into these people's intimate exchanges and you ask yourself: "Do I ever stumble over MY words?" The answer of course, is sure, we all do. It's unfortunate that most of the gaffes in this respect come early in the picture, because, by about twenty minutes, you've sunk so deep in you wouldn't know it if a bomb went off behind you.The next thing you notice...or maybe you notice it hours or days after the film ends, is that you never saw any substantial plot, yet the themes and the poetry of the dialog and characters never leave you. In fact, the treatment of the role race plays in the everyday lives of these characters is always there, but it's so ephemeral that even they aren't aware of how it's informing their opinions of themselves, their self-consciousness, their perceived status, or the fate of their relationships.The title is appropriate because you get a full spectrum of blacks, whites, and grays...and not just in the skin pigmentation of the characters. Leila Goldoni (truly remarkable here) is an afro-American/Caucasian, her two brothers are white and dark afro-American. The irony is that they exist in what is undoubtedly the "hippest" most tolerant atmosphere of the time...beat-driven upper east-west Manhatten...and there are still conflicts within and around themselves.I don't think I've ever seen a movie with such a subtle delivery or technique. It's a lot like absorbing a really great piece of gallery art and then just nodding off in bliss as you think back to the images it evoked days later.Great mastering and extras on the Criterion disc. Arguably the first truly experimental independent film ever made.

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 are so important in movies since filmmakers started using them because, basically, there's no film without a screenplay and many other reasons.Cassavetes pursued the same goal, and he believed in the freedom of words; "Shadows" is the perfect example. It's a film with no real main characters, with no real main plot lines; it's mostly people in different situations, talking. Yes, some of the situations are connected but Cassavetes, apparently always in a rush to get to the talking, uses a fast forward technique when the characters are going somewhere or escaping from someone and are not speaking.Appearances are everything in this movie. For example, there's a brilliant score, full of jazz influences and a lot of fantastic solos, and there's one character that says he's a jazz musician and plays the trumpet (Ben, all the characters' names are the same names the actors'). However, we never see him play the trumpet or jam with a band; he doesn't even talk about music and just wanders with his friends around the city. They do talk, a lot, and about anything that's in their minds; going from how intelligent each of them are to the hilarious analysis of a sculpture."Shadows" is funny in its intellectual references in parts like the one above, because these friends are not cultured. The only important female character in the film (Lelia), though, wants to be an intellectual. But again, she has one very interesting conversation with an older man at a party, about a book she's trying to write, and about how to confront reality; but nothing to do with being intellectual. At that same party, a woman is actually making an intellectual statement, full of complexity, and asks a guy beside her: "Do you agree?". "Yes", he says, but you can tell he doesn't know what she's talking about.Another character, a singer (Hugh), talks about his glory days in occasions, and we see him perform only once; but no references to the musical industry there. The focus of Cassavetes is the singer's relationship with his manager (Rupert), which most of the time involves chats about trivial stuff and not real 'musical' talks. So the trumpet player's important deal in "Shadows" is the time he spends with his friends; the intellectual wannabe girl's is her way of handling romantic relationships (one of the movie's strong points) and the singer's is the bond with his manager…Appearances.The reason why performances are not important in this movie is simple. Cassavetes needed people who could master improvisation, without mattering if they were actually good. I believe some of them aren't, but they surely know how to improvise in a scene, and you can notice how well they do it. "Shadows" is not about performers; it's about a way of making cinema, based on the magic of conversation; and there you could say that performances mean something.That's why in every conversation the camera is like a stalker, constantly on the eyes of every character, constantly looking for the expressions that come with natural speech. There's a scene where the trumpet player and his friends are trying to pick up some girls. They are three, so each of them sits beside one girl (the girls are three two) in three different tables. They all talk at the same time and the camera shoots through the table, and sometimes the friends look at each other, while they say whatever they are saying…It's natural.

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