Blaxploitation is an interesting thing. To me, it’s one of the only two film genres that most embodies the American spirit. That is not hyperbole-I truly and honestly believe so. Blaxploitation is a concept that arose from a period of both social and civil unrest and change into product with its own unique culture and identity. In doing so, it created a precedent for all future items similar to itself in idea. Sound anything like the origin of a country that you or I may know?
Shaft (the original 1971 version, not that Samuel L. Jackson remake dreck) is, was, and will forever remain the definitive blaxploitation film, utterly and without question. Not only that, but it’s also considered by many to be the very first blaxploitation movie. Shaft and other blaxploitation films represented black action heroes fighting white crime in a cynical urban environment. The films symbolized black-power politics in an era when portrayals of blacks regularly consisted of servants and sidekicks. Shaft broke the mold, laying the groundwork for modern actors and filmmakers like Samuel L. Jackson and Spike Lee. But is it any good? Not everything ages well, after all. Pop on in and find out.
John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is a New York private eye caught in the middle of a turf war between the mafia and gangster Bumpy. Shaft’s sculpted hair, skin-tight turtleneck, inky leather coat and holstered gun shape the detective’s cool machismo. The advertisements lauded him as the black equivalent of Bullitt and Bond, but cooler and hotter. In this era before AIDS he’s a proud lover, providing us with the rare screen show of black and white sex. He’s also honest and compassionate, offering money to a cold child and bantering with the street vendor. He’s a slick brother, a loner, with connections on the street and in the precinct. Although not trusted by the black criminal element, Shaft has both their respect and that of the white-dominated police, all of whom he intimidates and charms as necessity demands. His greatest ally are his brothers on the street–the ordinary citizens who know that John Shaft talks straight, hits hard and takes nothing from nobody when his dignity is on the line.
Shaft goes into action when Bumpy’s daughter is kidnapped by the mafia. With the aid of a friend in the precinct and the firepower of an underground militant, he takes on the Hoods, outfoxing and outgunning them at every turn. Wounded by machine-gun hitmen, Shaft launches a large-scale raid on a hotel in a final rescue attempt.
Shaft has a fantastic New York look and feel. A lot of the action action appears to take place around Times Square, which was quite a different place in 1970–much rougher, much more rundown. Director Gordon Parks and cinematographer Urs Furrer create a gritty New York City, which includes run-down Harlem tenements, flashing neon and late night delis. Parks also allows for plenty of humor. An unintentional side effect, the hip 70s fashions are hilariously dated, from haircuts and polyester to lingo and making love on a fur rug. Unlike the camp value of plaid suits and hair picks, Furrer’s camera work can often be unsettling. He hits the mark in scenes like Shaft’s authoritative emergence from the depths of the subway system, but later he’s too busy zooming in and out on close-ups to the point of distraction and even nausea. Parks isn’t the greatest action movie director, as evidenced in the climax, but he does the job.
The nice thing about Shaft is that it savors the private-eye genre and takes special delight in wringing new twists out of the traditional relationship between the private eye and the boys down at homicide. The story covers some of the same ground as Cotton Comes to Harlem (another genre classic), but in a different way. The film provides a previously unexplored podium for black power, showcasing the intelligence and honesty of the black community who live in a city where cabs don’t stop for a fare unless you’re white. Shaft is a fine private investigator, honest to himself, dedicated and disdainful of the weaknesses of others while blind to his own, which can actually be applied to Parks. Although Parks dispels film conventions of blacks as miscreants, he simultaneously underlines other stereotypes like the sanctimonious cop, flamboyantly gay bartender and stolid suit-wearing Italians. He takes up one cause while ignoring others.
One cannot touch on Shaft without talking about the soundtrack. “Theme from Shaft” as the main theme was known, was composed by Isaac Hayes and released as a single two months after the movie’s soundtrack. It then shot to number one. The song begins with a 16th note high hat ride pattern, played by Willie Hall, which was drawn from a break on Otis Redding’s “Try A Little Tenderness,” a Stax record on which Hayes had played. Also featuring heavily in the intro is Charles Pitts’ guitar, which uses a wah-wah effect common in 70s funk; the riff had originally been written for an unfinished Stax song. The synthesized keyboard is played by Hayes. Even on the edited single version, the intro lasts for more than two and a half minutes before any vocals are heard. At the time of its release, Shaft’s soundtrack with its Isaac Hayes title tune was a big draw, and probably had a lot to do with the movie’s crossover appeal. When Oscar night came around in 1972, the big thrill was not necessarily seeing Charlie Chaplin, but hearing Hayes himself perform the Shaft tune live with dancers and a smoke-and-light show. The semi-recent attempt in 1999 to recapture this moment with an Oscar medley wasn’t very successful, especially when the smoke machine went haywire and the number ended like the disastrous rehearsal in the musical The Band Wagon.
Shaft was as important for its time as were films like For Love of Ivy, which showed that black actors could be just as charming as whites in a fantasy Doris Day romantic environment. Say what you will about the excesses of the time, but in 1971, some movies were pushing in new directions, and steering themselves with and without the box-office as their guide. I proudly display a Shaft movie poster in my living room. One day, I will have it framed. Shaft may not be a complex thriller but it’s a lot of fun and it manages to evade looking fatally dated at the same time.