Cast View all

	Ben Carruthers	Ben
	Lelia Goldoni	Lelia
	Hugh Hurd	Hugh
	Anthony Ray	Tony
	Dennis Sallas	Dennis
	Tom Reese	Tom
	David Pokitillow	David
	Rupert Crosse	Rupert
	David Jones	Davey
	Pir Marini	Pir the Piano Player
	Victoria Vargas	Vickie
	Jack Ackerman	Jack / Director of Dance Studio
	Jacqueline Walcott	Jacqueline
	Cliff Carnell
	Jay Crecco
	Ronald Maccone
	Bob Reeh
	Joyce Miles	Girl in Restaurant
	Nancy Deale	Girl in Restaurant
	Gigi Brooks	Girl in Restaurant
	Lynn Hamilton	Girl at Party
	Marilyn Clark	Girl at Party
	Joanne Sages	Girl at Party
	Jed McGarvey	Girl at Party
	Greta Thyssen	Girl at Party

Crew View all

Director	John Cassavetes
Writer	John Cassavetes
Producer	Seymour Cassel, Maurice McEndree, Nikos Papatakis
Photography	Erich Kollmar

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Notes

Father's Day 2021 gift from Beth

John Cassavetes was a genius, a visionary, and the progenitor of American independent film, but that doesn’t begin to get at the generosity of his art. A former theater actor fascinated by the power of improvisation, Cassavetes brought his search for truth in performance to the screen. The five films in this collection-all of which the director maintained total control over by financing them himself and making them outside the studio system-are electrifying and compassionate creations, populated by all manner of humanity: beatniks, hippies, businessmen, actors, housewives, strippers, club owners, gangsters, children. Cassavetes has often been called an actor’s director, but this body of work-even greater than the sum of its extraordinary parts-shows him to be an audience’s director.


John Cassavetes’s directorial debut revolves around a romance in New York City between Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), a light- skinned black woman, and Tony (Anthony Ray), a white man. The relationship is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh (Hugh Hurd), and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was. Shot on location in Manhattan with a mostly nonprofessional cast and crew, Shadows is a penetrating work that is widely considered the forerunner of the American independent film movement.

SPECIAL FEATURES
New, high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
A Constant Forge: The Life and Art of John Cassavetes (2000), a 200-minute documentary by Charles Kiselyak (Blu-ray)
New interviews with actress Lelia Goldoni and associate producer Seymour Cassel
Silent footage from the Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop, from which Shadows emerged
Restoration demonstration
Stills and poster galleries
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Gary Giddins and a 1961 article by Cassavetes (DVD release)
New cover by Lucien S. Y. Yang

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