Gordon Parks’s Shaft may not be the first blaxploitation film (that honor goes to Cotton Comes to Harlem), but it’s quite likely the most successful, spawning an entire franchise that includes two sequels, a slew of TV movies, and two remakes. One of the major reasons for this popularity has to do with the nature of its protagonist. Drawing directly on the hardboiled tradition of Hammett and Chandler, screenwriters Ernest Tidyman (who wrote the source novel) and John D.F. Black position private detective John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) as an independent operator, beholden neither to white policemen like Lt. Vic Androzzi (Charles Cioffi) with whom he occasionally consults, nor to the Black gangster, Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn), who hires him to find his daughter (Sherrie Brewer), kidnapped by Italian mafia looking to muscle in on his territory.
Shaft isn’t exactly Superman, especially as he proves all too pervious to bullets, but he’s a deliberately crafted (super)hero for the Black community—as Tidyman, who was white, mentioned in interviews—making him sort of a precursor to Jamie Foxx’s ex-slave from Django Unchained. What’s more, Shaft effortlessly crosses boundaries. He’s as much at home uptown in Harlem, whether with Bumpy Jonas and his crew or the people on the street, as is he is in Midtown near the Deuce where he keeps his office, or downtown in the Village where he lives, stopping in regularly at the Caffe Reggio for an espresso. Shaft goes out of its way to map this terrain, creating a specific socioeconomic portrait for native New Yorkers, as well as fashioning a grittily realistic New York of the mind for the rest of country.
Shaft also exhibits exceptional prowess when it comes to the ladies. Isaac Hayes’s phenomenally funky “Theme from Shaft,” which introduces us to the man while the opening credits play out, claims he’s “a sex machine to all the chicks.” By way of illustration, we’re witness to not one but two softcore sex scenes: one with his main squeeze Ellie (Gwenn Mitchell), the other with a white woman, Linda (Margaret Warncke), whom he picks up in a bar. (The latter would’ve been especially provocative in 1971.) But the film’s sexual politics are slightly more complicated than that. On her way out, Linda informs Shaft that he may be great in the sack, but he’s pretty “shitty” afterward. And then there’s stern Dina Greene (Camille Yarbrough), who makes it very plain that, in her home, she won’t take any mess.
Shaft also touches on racial politics with the introduction of Ben Buford (Christopher St. John) and his band of Black militants. They’re integral to the unfolding of the film’s narrative, even if the audience doesn’t learn a whole lot about their actual beliefs. When Shaft visits their hidden headquarters, the only information we gather comes from a Malcolm X poster on the wall. These militants aren’t clad in black leather like the Panthers, but, given their fondness for weaponry, it’s clear that they’re on that end of spectrum. No doubt, the filmmakers likely wanted to keep things vague so as not to promulgate any specific platform or agenda.
Shaft has stood the test of time not only because it’s a rousing crowd-pleaser filled with violence, sex, and social commentary, but also because it’s a glittery (yet gritty) snapshot of a time and place in transition, as the activist 1960s slouched into the pensive 1970s. Beyond that, the surface pleasures to be savored throughout—from the hip fashions to the soulful music to the notion of a social outlier determined to stick it to the Man—all serve as a welcome template for the flood of blaxploitation titles that followed in its wake.
Image/Sound
The Criterion Collection offers Shaft on both 2160p UHD and 1080p Blu-ray discs, both of which look superb, especially in motion and in low-light and nighttime settings. The major difference between the two transfers is a noticeable increase in the clarity and depth of the UHD image, as well as a boost to the color saturation, even though the film’s palette tends toward the darker hues of brown and black. Audio is available in either English LPCM mono or stereo. The monaural mix serves it up front and center, while the stereo lends some suitable separation to the gunfire and other ambient effects. Both options nicely support Isaac Hayes’s iconic funky soul soundtrack, which is almost a character in and of itself.
Extras
The extras on this three-disc set are spread out across two Blu-rays. In a nice touch, you get a spiffy new HD transfer of the 1972 Gordon Douglas-directed sequel, Shaft’s Big Score!, which definitely subscribes to the notion that “more is more,” and sees Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, and Drew Bundini Brown reprising their roles. There are also a number of interviews, both archival and new, with cast and crew members, among them Roundtree, Hayes, Douglas, and costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi. They’re all quite interesting, and Isaac Hayes’s appearance on French TV even comes with a sizzling live performance.
The academically inclined featurette “Revisiting Shaft” contains a lot of fascinating insights into the film’s sociopolitical background and influence. The older “Soul in Cinema: Shooting Shaft on Location” includes priceless footage of Douglas and Hayes hashing out the right sound for the Shaft theme, which is recycled in several of the other featurettes. The three-part “A Complicated Man: The Shaft Legacy” takes a more populist, but equally intriguing, approach to the film and its subsequent franchise. And the featurette on Black detectives in literature and film, featuring novelist Walter Moseley and scholar Kinohi Nishikawa, conveys some much needed historical context. Finally, there’s a foldout leaflet with a perceptive essay on the film’s racial politics and more from film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri.
Overall
Quintessential blaxploitation that launched a thousand imitators, Gordon Parks’s Shaft is much more than a rollicking crowd-pleaser, as it’s also a snapshot of a bygone era.
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