Shadows

Last night I saw the 1959 film Shadows, directed by John Cassavetes. The film concerns three African-American siblings: Ben (Ben Carruthers), Leila (Leila Goldoni) and Hugh (Hugh Hurd) who live in New York City. Hugh is a talented jazz musician who is constantly frustrated by the fact that he has to earn money playing show tunes in sleazy bars and introducing strippers, Ben wants to be a cool, hipster writer but spends most of his time drinking and hanging out with his friends, while Leila is involved in a troubled inter-racial relationship. The film is one of the most influential films of the American independent cinema. Cassavetes started out as an actor, and is probably best known as Mia Farrow's husband in Rosemary's Baby. He wanted to play real characters dealing with real situations and was unhappy with what was on offer in Hollywood movies. However, Cassavetes realised that if no-one else was making the movies he wanted to be involved in then he would have to do it himself. Cassavetes ran an acting school and company who he used as actors for his film, which he raised the $40,000 budget for partly by issuing appeals to the public for donations on national radio. Shadows was made first in 1957 and was completely improvised by the cast, but was apparently so bad that few people sat through the whole thing, and so Cassavetes remade it in 1959 with the same cast and using a lot of footage from the original, but it was technically more proficient and was largely scripted (depsite a title at the end claiming the film was an improvisation). The film has a very loose plot and it is funny, interesting and spontaneous. The soundtrack features famous jazz musician Charles Mingus.

It was another very ordinary and dull day at work. When I got home I microwaved some lamb rogan josh for dinner and listened to a reading of "The Haunted Doll's House" by M.R. James in which a man buys a valuable antique doll's house at a surprisingly low price. Late that night however, he discovers that the doll's house has a disturbing and gruesome secret.