Shaft, Gordon Parks, 1971, USA, Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi.
is not the first, it may be the best but it is certainly the quintessential blaxploitation or at least the best known product, which proved to kick off a series of films aimed at the emerging market for African-American audience the early seventies and, surprisingly, in this case achieved great commercial success becoming a whole "crossover" and still today enjoy the status of cult film ... and the detective John Shaft is a type built correctly from the charisma provided by the actor who plays him ( Richard Roundtree), the impressive soundtrack of Isaac Hayes and / or aspects that raise the quality of the result above - -well above the average Metro género.Sin doubt hit home with this movement to bring people of color and the accounts show: at a cost of half a million dollars revenue soared to 13 .
The first commercial film with all black protagonist is based on the character of the writer and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman white and under the baton of multifaceted Gordon Parks (the first black director to lead to a large studio) is erected on a representative rate at the time, black version of Bond or Bullitt (reads as advertising) and Harry , tough guy and manly he can with everything that gets in their way; Shaft is a charismatic hero, defiant and proud that does not hesitate to employ methods expeditivos.El explicit treatment given to the violence (although current standards used to not be surprised) began in those years and this film is a good example highlighting however, even more, the frank sex (interesting the presentation of documents sexual) coming to pose an interracial encounter.
The portrait of the underworld of a big city provided by the good use of the excellent locations and some air "noir" combined with a fast pace action and a script that respects the "tempo" dramatically in the beginning of the story but later decay to reach a final anticlimactic open but failed to lend the film a quality plus seasoned with the composition of Roundtree, in particular, the soundtrack to Hayes and results in a more entertaining film that does not interrupt digna.Un police and is at the height of other characters similar billboard filled the time and even a one point above them and a few of the righteous avengers who came, and come-later.
blaxploitation The most profitable history definitively clears the path opened by the same Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree , 1969) and especially by "Coffin" Johnson and "Gravedigger" Jones , a pair of tough detectives Harlem created by Chester Himes that were made into movies in 1970 by Ossie Davis (Cotton Comes to Harlem ), a path that signaled a more experimental films, raw and politically incorrect history directed, written, produced and performed by Melvin Van Peebles ( Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song , 1971) whose rudeness problem for American society becomes more watered down so that the commercial operation of the MGM is accomplished in this cult film that puts a black man in the middle of the action, the leitmotif of a genre that had its heyday in the '70s with stereotypically different subgenera whose main ingredients and warns the film at hand : colloquial language, sex, violence, urban environment and of course a peculiar aesthetic of the decade (who likes find undoubtedly added value in the film). In any case, independently of the varying quality of this movie is obviously facilitated the advent of Spike Lee or John Singleton post and influenced directors who enjoyed great prestige at present, in this sense, Tarantino and Jackie Brown homage to the genre is certainly permitted, even Pam Grier recover who played with the Tamara Dobson female alter ego of John Shaft and Youngblood Priest in films of the genre.
Sea as a product designed to surround a new market or proclaims a community protest historically battered inserted into a key period of social evolution (the times Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists were the same ) this story is as entertaining and nimble work given the high dose of action and germinated in gender, in addition, you should pay particular attention to how their seminal work provided it. The hard detective prototype presented is pretty decent and at times capture the essence and the environment by moving the Marlowe, Spade and the company of the most classic and pure "hardboiled."
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