John Cassavetes

 John Cassavetes



Shadows (1959)




RANKED:


1. Shadows (1959)


In December of 1959, avant-garde film critic Jonas Mekas wrote a manifesto called "A Call for a New Generation of Film Makers." In this manifesto, he states that a newly released American film by John Cassavetes, called "Shadows," was the start of a new movement that would inspire independent filmmakers, energize the flagging avant-garde scene, and triumph over the commercial Hollywood film industry. Nobody at the time realized just how spot-on Mekas was with his assessment. While the Italian neo-realist movement was coming to a fitting close and the French New Wave movement was reaching its explosive introduction, John Cassavetes was filming something that would change the fabric of Hollywood forever. "Shadows," a story of a light-skinned black girl having a troubling relationship with a white man who doesn't yet realize she's black, is a film that employs a freeform camera on the streets of New York, portrays naturalistic acting, and contains scenes that are entirely improvisational. This 'independence' from any studio structure or adherence to a standard visual format that was instructed by the studio created the 'New Hollywood movement,' which disintegrated the over-bloated and theatrical nature of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Indie cinema was born.

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