John Cassavetes'
Shadows is a film that will change you opinion of what cinema is capable of.
Shot in 1957, with reshoots a year later, the film tells the story of Lelia and Tommy, young lovers who spend a night together and then are ripped apart by their own very human flaws. The film focuses on a family of three bi-racial siblings living together in New York. Hugh is the oldest brother, darkest skinned, and a jazz singer. Younger brother Benny is a fair skinned rastabout who lives by night, and is only out for kicks. Youngest Lelia is the fairest of the bunch and is mired in the fantasy of female youth. Idelaistic, and apiringly intellectual, Lelia meets Tommy at a literary party. Like all of the people Lelia regularly hangs out with, Tommy is white. This is the central issue with the film, the real drama begins once TOmmy has met Lelia's brother Hugh and is blindsided with her race. It's not so much revulsion he feels, but guilt, for feeling revolted. This sends the family into a circling of the wagons around Lelia, whomust now cometoterms with the world she lives in.
The story of Shadows is fairly basic. A lot of what comprises the film isn't germaine to the plot. This is because it was born out of the improvisations Cassavetes was conducting in his acting classes. The idea was to improve until you came up with believable characters and situations, and then rehearse them until they were second nature and you truly embodied them. Only then would the actor be able to catch the reality of emotion Cassavetes was after. His approach was to shoot, and shoot, and shoot some more. Anything until the performance was on film. In later pictures he would find other techniques to ellicit the raw emotion that is the standard of all his films. But Shadows achieved it through perseverance. Working at each role until it was a real person, the actors were able to truly convey.
The heart and story are in the eyes, the glances, the body language, the bursts of excitement, and the flaws of every character in Shadows. Besides being the birth of modern American Independent Cinema, it's also adamm good movie, rough and raw, literally bleeding with feeling.