Shaft

Gordon Parks, USA 1971, 100 mins

Richard Rowntree is Shaft, in what was to become the first of three movies featuring the streetwise black private eye. It was only the second feature from director Gordon Parks, who had previously worked as a stills photographer, and was based on a series of novels by Ernest Tidyman, who co-wrote the screenplay with John D.F. Black.

The plot is perhaps the weakest aspect of the film, as it could come from a multitude of lacklustre films or TV shows, where nobody would think it special. Shaft is hired by black mobster Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn) to find his daughter, who has been kidnapped by the Mafia. Shaft is helped by a group of black militants, led by Ben Buford, and helped and hindered in equal measure by a local police lieutenant (Charles Cioffi) who is trying to keep the situation from getting out of control.

If the plot isn't up to much, what is there to recommend Shaft? Well, there are a number of things. The music, by Isaac Hayes (who went on to appear in the spoof of all the blaxploitation films I'm Gonna Git You Sucka) was nominated for an Oscar for best score, and the title song Theme From Shaft' won the Oscar for best song. It's all pretty funky stuff, filled with wah-wah guitar. The clothes are also pretty amazing, Rowntree sporting a particularly fine leather trenchcoat throughout the film. And lastly, the dialogue is really hip (or it was in the early 70s), and consequently very funny.

You might spend some of your time laughing at Shaft just because of the music, the clothes, and the dialogue, but it's a film that it's impossible not to enjoy, for the very same reasons.

Jonathan Caryl
EUFS Programme 1998-99