The ugliness is self-evident, even proud. The opening scene, at a raucous basement club show, is willfully shambolic, clearly more concerned with depicting the atmosphere of the room than framing it in any conventional sense. The camera jumps, the crowd surges in an out of the frame, the soundtrack doesn’t match the music being performed. It’s amateur stuff, but it’s also a willful challenge to cinematic convention, right down to the quavering appearance of the title card over the shot.
The first character we focus on is Ben, a sullen hipster with bug-eye sunglasses who stumbles into the scene. He comes off like James Dean without most of the good looks, and this stylization appears intentional on his part, especially in the dramatic entrance. He climbs up above the crowd, crouching alone on a table-top and indulging himself in a miniature existential freak-out
The reference point seems clearly to be Rebel without a Cause, but it also becomes clear that it’s not Cassavetes who’s referencing this as much as Ben himself. A good third of Shadows (Ben’s segments, this is a family drama, the rest of the action is devoted to his sister and brother) works on the same themes of alienation and angst the Nicholas Ray presented in that film. But while Ray drew out these feelings into melodramatic bursts of suburban hellfire dripping with Technicolor, Cassavetes presents another direct challenge to the establishment. Again, the ugliness. It’s everywhere, the filthy downtown streets, the greasy spoon diners, the concert halls. Cassavetes indulges in it, just like Ben indulges himself in the Dean character, which works to instantly identify his measured faux-badass persona. Note that one of these is the definition of realism, the other the definition of fallacy.
Cause or not, Ben and his friends are not rebels as much as creepy hepcats and small time hustlers. They mostly act like jerks, preying on women, mocking sculptures at the MOMA, getting into fights, swatting at pigeons (see above). It’s refreshing that Cassavetes, working with a cast on the fringes, does not take this as a cue to unleash the holy torment of society’s woeful misfits. Ben’s rebellions are stupid. They are explained and sourced, so we can feel for the character behind them, but they’re rash and immature, and, like the actions of the overzealous young people Godard (who was working off his own Ray obsession) was creating at the time, are embarrassingly shaped by the expectations of modern cinematic clichés.
I’ve already mentioned Cassavetes’ taste for confrontation with the establishment. He makes direct reference to it throughout the movie, posing his characters directly in front of marquees and posters that slyly comment on the action. As Leila, Ben’s sister, faces off with a grasping stalker, she is surrounded by pouty shots of Bardot in And God Created Woman and other sex romps. Hugh, Ben’s brother, contemplates a potentially devastating career decision like so:
What is Cassavetes saying here? Is he trying out the idea that cinematic conventions have intruded so far into everyday life that they influence these characters without their even realizing? I think that’s close, but not exactly it, especially because Ben is the only character who seems directly influenced in this way. I think that this is a double point, about the outsiders this film portrays (who in some ways stand for the film itself) who despite their fringe status still find themselves effected and peered over by society’s rules and mores. They are outside society, but not separate from it, an idea reinforced by Cassavetes’ tenuous love-hate relationship with his cinematic forebears.
Of course, the discussion of Ben’s family brings up the one huge issue I haven’t touched on – race. This is a film about outsiders and it uses race as a driving point for this topic, confronting it in frank and realistic terms, more so than any film I’ve seen up to its point in history. The three siblings are a multiracial family; they have no visible parents and live together in one apartment.
The idea here is that we have three siblings and three colors. Hugh appears to be black. Leila appears to be white. Ben looks like he’s somewhere in between. These differences in shade greatly alter their characters and their destinies, effectively settling each of them into a specific role in their lives and in the film.
Here we see that the overbearing confluence of fantasy and reality doesn’t only intersect in Ben’s rebellions. It also persists in his siblings lives, resulting in an air of failed attempts and unrealistic expectations. Hugh wants to be famous, or at least respected, but he won’t be, his career is going nowhere and only his manager takes him seriously.
There is an especially heartbreaking scene where the initial embarrassment of having to introduce a dance act gives way to a much larger one. Hugh, still thinking of himself as an artist, refuses to do the introduction at first, but eventually agrees, taking the whole thing in stride, even coming up with a few jokes to tell the audience. His performance, however, is cut short to appease a visibly bored audience. He segues into the introduction but is shouted down by the manager, left standing dumbfounded on the stage
Leila’s tragedy is a little more subtle. She wants to be white, but as much as she appears to be, she never will. The idea that she cannot escape the tendrils of society becomes clear when Tony, her new boyfriend, meets Hugh. He is visibly horrified, shocked to discover this fact about her, and although he is quickly apologetic Hugh does not give him the chance to correct his mistake. 
It’s clear that this is partially Leila’s fault. By not telling him she is either being willfully deceitful or living under the assumed fantasy that race doesn’t matter in their little Greenwich village enclave of musicians and intellectuals. It does. As much as Greenwich is a world in itself around this time, it cannot exist separately from the conventions of society. It’s her deceit then, paired with society’s rules, that splits the two apart, even as Tony struggles to apologize. Leila even agrees, after much trepidation, to a date with a black acquaintance.
Despite his status as the blackest (and therefore most marginalized) character, Hugh is the anchor of the family and the only solid force we meet. His race is an obstacle, but it has made him stronger. He’s comfortable with himself. His brother and sister, on the other hand, are intensely uncomfortable with the drop of blackness that haunts their white features. Ben throws a ridiculous fit when a black girl makes advances at him, swinging at her and anyone who tries to restrain him. It’s as if even the suggestion of his hidden blackness is enough to drive him crazy.
The date that Leila goes on sees her struggling repeatedly with the fact that she is not entirely white. It’s as if the encounter itself is forcing her to lose all her illusions about her perceived racial status, which in some ways it is. She puts on a thorny façade with her suitor, blasting him with taciturn rudeness, but he is so balanced and persistent that she eventually collapses from the strain of the act. She ends up in his arms, which feels like less of an acknowledgment than a defeat.
These characters find no resolution, which allows Cassavetes to end the film as he began it, a direct challenge to what was seen as the rules. There’s also an emphasis on movement. Hugh, who may be slipping quickly into failure, decides to press on; at least he’s having a good time. Ben and his friends end up in a tin shack with the shit kicked out of them. This doesn’t stop him from getting up, dusting himself off and posing one more time like a matinee idol.
Before disappearing back into the milieu, another face in a crowd from which he can never fully extricate himself.
Miscellaneous:
It may not be intentional, but Rupert, Hugh’s manager (in the middle), has the whitest voice I have ever heard. Whiter than anyone I have ever met. The kind of ridiculous nasal voice that Dave Chappelle imitates. It’s pure ‘50s, like the faux-British, Connecticut prep school articulation (think Katherine Hepburn) of the immaculately refined, which also seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.
If the Nicholas Ray influence wasn’t apparent enough, his son is in the movie, as Tony.
Who knows how exact the casting was on this, but Ben’s posse plays like a small collection of gangster movie castoffs. On the left, the tough-talking little wise guy with a Napoleon complex, on the right, the steely-jawed, free fisted mug.
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