Sometimes innovations are so thoroughly absorbed into an art that the innovator fades into the background, but 15 years after John Cassavetes died, he’s achieved near-mythic status. Few people forget their first Cassavetes film; his work confuses and confounds, but even those who don’t like it can find it difficult to shake off. Recently the Criterion Collection released a lavish box of eight DVDs collecting five of the director’s features: Shadows (1959), Faces (1968), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), and Opening Night (1977). Self-financed, produced without studio backing or distribution, they represent something of a Rosetta stone for American independents.
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In 1956 he and Fred Lane formed the Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop to provide an outlet for edgy work by actors unable to find expression elsewhere. Shadows began as a series of improvisations based on the members’ experiences, and over a period of months these evolved into a story about an interracial romance, set against a Lower East Side milieu of artists, musicians, and slackers. Cassavetes was anxious to capture the work’s energy and directness on film, and during a February 1957 spot on Jean Shepherd’s radio program Night People, he talked up the workshop’s nascent film. “If people really want to see a movie about people,” he proclaimed, “they should just contribute money.” Over the next few days over $2,500 flooded in, some of it delivered by hand.
After an arduous production, Shadows premiered in November 1958, and according to Cassavetes it was an artistic, technical, and popular disaster. Avant-garde filmmaker and critic Jonas Mekas gave it the first Independent Film Award on behalf of Film Culture magazine, but Cassavetes disowned the cut, which he described as “a totally intellectual film—and therefore less than human.” Feeling he’d overemphasized technique and “experimentation for its own sake,” he reshot much of the film to stress the raw emotion that would become a defining element of his work.
This freedom came with a hefty price tag. Nowadays we’re accustomed to breakthrough films that were financed on credit cards, and even a movie shot on cameras from Best Buy, like The Blair Witch Project, can be picked up by a major studio and rake in millions of dollars. But in the 1960s and ’70s, Cassavetes was dismissed as sloppy and self-indulgent by uncomprehending critics. Almost as many people are credited with the production of this box set as reportedly paid to see Opening Night when it first screened in New York City. Teamsters picketed and even sabotaged his sets because he had the audacity to hire nonunion talent. And more conventional actors, cast alongside Cassavetes’s regulars, were often frustrated by the lack of traditional blocking and direction.
For Cassavetes fans the real holy grail has been the original version of Shadows, but they won’t find it here. Ray Carney, a Boston University professor and Cassavetes scholar, recently turned up the only known copy after decades of detective work. But a long-simmering conflict between him and Rowlands boiled over when, according to Carney, Rowlands asked him to hand over the print to be destroyed, allegedly in honor of her late husband’s wishes. She and Ruban closed ranks, and Carney was ousted from the DVD project; as “scholarly adviser” he’d originally been slated to provide audio commentary, liner notes, and other materials, but the only reference to him now is a small thank-you in the credits.
