Shadows (1959)

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for cassavetes to claim that he didn't know what he was doing when he made this brilliant little gem may sound like false modesty, but his willingness to plunge into situations he didn't understand was one of the filmmaker's most vital qualities. he worked in the dark when he made every one of his movies. that way of functioning goes against the grain of most of the rest of our culture. we're obsessed with knowingness. our goal is to be "smart". the typical hollywood director does into a shoot with with as much as possible figured out in advance-what his characters should look and sound like; how they should act and feel in every scene. cassavetes made movies very differently. he used filmmaking not to make points he had already decided on, but to explore aspects of his experience he didn't understand. in this respect, he functioned like a documentary filmmaker. filmmaking was asking questions you really didn't know the answers to. at every step of the process-writing, rehearsing, shooting, or editing-the goal was to hold yourself genuinely