Shaft is a 1971 American blaxploitation crime action thriller film directed by Gordon Parks and written by Ernest Tidyman and John D. F. Black. It is an adaptation of Tidyman's novel of the same name and is the first entry in the Shaft franchise. The plot revolves around a private detective named John Shaft who is hired by a Harlem mobster to rescue his daughter from the Italian mobsters who kidnapped her. The film stars Richard Roundtree as Shaft, alongside Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, and Lawrence Pressman.
The film explores themes including masculinity and sexuality, with a specific emphasis on Black Power. It was filmed in Harlem, Greenwich Village, and Times Square within the Manhattan borough of New York City. The Shaft soundtrack album, recorded by Isaac Hayes, was also a success, winning a Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture and a second Grammy (shared with Johnny Allen) for Best Instrumental Arrangement. The "Theme from Shaft" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, making Hayes the first Black man to win the award for that category. The song has appeared on multiple Top 100 lists, including AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs.
A prime example of the blaxploitation genre, it was selected in 2000 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Shaft initially had two sequels called Shaft's Big Score! (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973), though neither enjoyed the critical success of the original.
Plot In January 1971,Calendar in Shaft's office shows January 1971. See Production. private investigator John Shaft is informed that some gangsters are looking for him. He spots one of the men waiting for him in his office building and ambushes him. At gunpoint, he brings him to his office, where the second gangster is already waiting. During a short fight, Shaft dodges one of them, who falls out of a window. The other one reveals that Bumpy Jonas, the leader of a Harlem-based organized crime family, wants Shaft brought uptown to Harlem for a meeting. At the police station, Lieutenant Vic Androzzi and a detective question Shaft about the gangster's death, which Shaft calls an "accident". Androzzi allows Shaft to return to the streets for 48 hours to gather more information. Shaft meets with Bumpy, who tearfully reveals that his daughter has been kidnapped. Shaft is at first dismissive, accusing her of being a runaway or on drugs, until Jonas says she was on her way to college when she got abducted. He asks Shaft to ensure her safe return, and Shaft agrees to help. Bumpy advises that Shaft should seek out Ben Buford, a black militant leader.
Shaft tracks down Buford, and a shootout ensues with an unknown assailant. Afterward, Shaft is told by Androzzi that Shaft, not Ben, was the target, and that tensions brewing between the uptown hoods belonging to Bumpy Jonas and the downtown Mafiosi have culminated in other murders. Androzzi laments that the issue is seen as black-against-white to the general public and worries about the escalation into a full-blown race war. He also shows Shaft some pictures of Mafia men who just arrived in New York. Shaft and Ben meet with Bumpy and accuse him of setting up the shootout. After Bumpy agrees to pay $10,000 for each of Ben's men who died, Ben and Shaft join forces to find Bumpy's daughter.
Later, Shaft surmises that mobsters are watching his apartment from a local bar. Shaft pretends to be a bartender and calls Androzzi to have the mobsters arrested. Shaft then confronts the arrested mobsters about Bumpy's daughter, and he sets up a meeting. When he gets home, Vic arrives and tells Shaft that the room at the station house was bugged and his superior wants to bring Shaft in for questioning regarding the kidnapping. Instead of taking him in, Androzzi leaves. Shaft is escorted by a Mafia member to the apartment where Marcy Jonas is being held, and Ben and two of his men tail them. Once there, a shootout ensues: two Mafia men are killed, and Shaft takes a bullet in the shoulder. After receiving medical attention, Shaft tells Ben to round up his men and meet him at the hotel where Marcy has been taken. He calls Bumpy to tell him his daughter is fine, but that he needs taxicabs at the hotel for the getaway.
At the hotel, Shaft, Ben, and Ben's men dress as hotel workers and slowly infiltrate the hotel. Shaft gets to the roof of the hotel, and swings into the room where Marcy is kept. He kills the gangster guarding her and brings her outside. Meanwhile, Ben and his men kill the gangsters in the surrounding rooms, and exit. After the taxicabs take Marcy, Ben, and Ben's men away, Shaft calls Androzzi from a phone booth, telling him that his case has just busted open. When Androzzi asks him to close it, Shaft tells him to close it himself, hangs up the phone, and walks away laughing.
Cast
Background Shaft was adapted from Ernest Tidyman's novels by Tidyman and screenwriter John D. F. Black. Joel Freeman and executive producers Stirling Silliphant and Roger Lewis produced the film.Reid, Mark. Redefining Black Film. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
The screen detective genre in the late 1960s had been dominant in major movies with big stars attached. Paul Newman had established his Harper in 1966, (he reprised the character in 1975, in The Drowning Pool). Soon following, Frank Sinatra's Tony Rome (1967), The Detective (1968), and Lady in Cement (1968) further set the quality. Industry knowledge suggested that the first of the Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry productions was also slated for a 1971 release. Seeing that his directorial debut of a major entertainment production was set to be compared to these previous productions, Gordon Parks realized that a bold casting choice was necessary for Shaft.
Although black in the source novel, Tidyman's original draft screenplay had Shaft as white. However, [Gordon] Parks cast African American actor Richard Roundtree as the eponymous hero. The entire dynamic of the film, its later success, and the future of blaxploitation films were all greatly impacted by Parks' decision. This film was created less to impact black consciousness and more to simply to show a fun film', which people could attend on Saturday night and see a black guy winning." Nevertheless, Parks said in the documentary about his work, Half Past Autumn (2000), that he had hoped the film would inspire young African Americans by presenting them with "a hero they hadn't had before." Shaft was intentionally created to "appeal to a black urban audience, along with contiguous white youths."
After production, in an effort to entice a large black audience to see the film, MGM hired UniWorld, a black advertising firm, who "popularized Shaft by using the rhetoric of black power." Although this film was notable for its crossover success with both white and black audiences, UniWorld focused largely on attracting members of the African-American community. "For example, Variety reported UniWorld's advertisement description of the protagonist John Shaft as, 'A lone, black Superspade—a man of flair and flamboyance who has fun at the expense of the (white) establishment.'" They also promoted the behind-the-camera participation of blacks', thereby appealing to blacks who would appreciate the film as a black production or could fantasize that blacks had somehow beat the Hollywood system and taken over Metro-Goldwyn Mayer studios."
Roundtree's view about being in the film When asked at the 2014 Virginia Film Festival how it felt to be cast as Shaft, Richard Roundtree responded that he had been extremely excited about the part at the time. He had previously been cast mostly in commercials, and this role, his first in a feature film, was a big break for him.
Production
Melvin Van Peebles claimed that the success of his film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song caused Shaft to be changed from a "white movie" into a "black one". In fact, filming of Shaft began in January 1971, several months before the release of Van Peebles' film, with Roundtree already confirmed in the lead role. The story is set in the same month, as shown by a calendar on Shaft's office wall.
Tidyman, who is white, was an editor at The New York Times prior to becoming a novelist. He sold the movie rights to Shaft by showing the galley proofs to the studio (the novel had not yet been published). Tidyman was honored by the NAACP for his work on the Shaft movies and books.
Themes
Portrayal of race Shaft played a crucial part in the development of African-American advancement in Hollywood. In the creation of Shaft, there was a significant African-American presence, with director Parks, editor Hugh A. Robertson, and composer Isaac Hayes playing crucial roles. On the other hand, white men controlled the other important aspects of Shaft'''s production. Scenarist and writer Tidyman, writer Black, producer Freeman, and executive producers Silliphant and Lewis were all white men who heavily influenced the making of Shaft. In an analysis of Shaft, Stanly Corkin stated, "Further, the reception of the idea of blackness also becomes various, defined by any number of subject positions, and again, those cannot be fixed to any particular racially defined place of origin." MGM was struggling financially during the making of this film, so making a profitable film was a necessity. "Under the devious guise of providing the Black American with a new and positive image of his/her life, these films confer upon the viewer, Black or White, little more than a pretended glamour and sophistication, the empty, repetitive wasteland of ancient Hollywood traditionalism."
Parks' decision to cast Roundtree rather than a white actor, for whom the role was written, instantly altered the presentation of race in the film. Critics, however, believed the plot was not altered enough to accommodate the change in racial dynamics. "Mark Reid, for example, argues that Shaft is a product of the (white) studio imagination and merely a 'black-skinned replica' of the white action hero commonly found in the detective genre."
One way that Shaft's blackness was showcased was through his attire. Shaft was "stylistically racialized: [He] wears clothes and affects manners that are associated with being black". Shaft was known for his elegant garb, as he was frequently draped in leather coats and turtlenecks throughout the film.
Shaft relies upon a group of militant black nationalists in helping him complete his mission to save Bumpy's daughter. However, the film presented the black nationalists as a group that failed to further the black cause, raised no awareness of the black struggle, and functioned primarily as a hired team of assailants who assisted Shaft on his mission.
The result of this portrayal of blackness in early 1970s blaxploitation films like Shaft had an effect on black audiences viewing them. Instead of the collective nature of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movement in the 1960s, these films helped to usher in a decade of self-indulgence, material gain, and drug consumption. "Equally important, Riley points out that the narratives about, and images of, blacks in these new films are no more than thematic templates reworked with black casts and updated stereotypes that reconfirm white expectations of blacks and serve to repress and delay the awakening of any real political consciousness."
Black power through masculinity
The movie touched on several themes that reflected the ideals of the Black Power movement. Some of the actions taken by Shaft highlighted the positive aspects of this movement, while others brought out some of its less progressive facets.