Shadows

Announcing the premiere of the final cut of Shadows at Cinema 16, Amos Vogel wrote: "The most important independent American film of the decade, already legendary: John Cassavetes' pulsating revelation of the demi-monde of night owls—floaters, chicks, jazz musicians, and hipsters in the neon-lit desert of Times Square. The overwhelming immediacy of this brilliant return to improvisation in cinema paints a compassionate, brutal portrait of flirting and fighting, loneliness, occasional affairs, and self-discovery. The remarkably told love story shows Black people not as liberal clichés, but as human beings in all their complexity." More than an intoxicating snapshot of the Beat Generation, the aesthetics of Shadows, found “on the street” with 16mm handheld cameras, became a defining moment for independent US cinema (and Cassavetes as a director who remains an unmatched role model): it epitomizes the break with Hollywood norms and heralds a new, dynamic, young cinema that is taking the whole world by storm. (C.H.)