Shadows is as pleasurable to watch as any John Cassavetes
film, although in a different way: perhaps as a more conventional verite-type
experience. That’s partly on fairly simple grounds: it’s made up of shorter
scenes, so that Cassavetes’ behavioural choreography emerges here more in
spurts than in fully-developed dances; it’s more specifically rooted in a
particular time and place (the many shots of movie theater and Broadway
marquees, playing the likes of early Brigitte Bardot movies and the original
production of The Most Happy Fella, almost constitute an engaging mini-documentary in
themselves). The film makes a notable statement on race primarily by not making
a notable statement about it, by structuring itself around three siblings of
notably different skin tone and allowing the situation to speak for itself, by
presenting inter-racial relationships that flow freely and naturally: the main
plot point (insofar as there is one) involves the revelation of prejudice in a
man who’s been pursuing Leila Goldoni’s character, but the film is fairly subtle in how it presents this. The closing titles emphasize for us that we’ve been
watching an improvisation, and one certainly feels that in the naturalistic
rhythms: more broadly though, the film is just as much about
improvisation, about trying identities and mannerisms on for size, and perhaps
ultimately starting to stumble toward a better sense of self (although, of
course, the resolution is hardly that tidy). The film still feels (for lack of
a better word) plain cool in a way that Cassavetes’ later films mostly
consciously eschew – it channels an electrically aspirational milieu, set
against an almost ever-present jazzy soundtrack. For all its many
observational and performative grace notes though, one of the greatest passing pleasures comes from Cassavetes’ own brief, wordless but pugnacious appearance,
even if it almost seems now to jolt us momentarily out of this movie and into
(say) that of the more characteristic Husbands.
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