#1130: PARKS, Gordon: Shaft (1971)
PARKS, Gordon (United States)
Shaft [1971]
Director/Writer
Shaft [1971]
Spine #1130
Blu-ray
While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director Gordon Parks made this groundbreaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and gave the screen a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, in a career-defining role), a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss (Moses Gunn) from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. A vivid time capsule of seventies Manhattan in all its gritty glory that has inspired sequels and multimedia reboots galore, the original Shaft is studded with indelible elements—from Roundtree’s sleek leather fashions to the iconic funk and soul score by Isaac Hayes.
100 minutes
Color
Color
Monaural
1:85:1 aspect ratio
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2022
From the novel by Ernest Tidyman.
Screenplay by Tidyman and John D. F. Black.
Gordon Parks was 59 when he directed Shaft.
Screenplay by Tidyman and John D. F. Black.
Gordon Parks was 59 when he directed Shaft.
Other Parks films in the Collection:
The Film
a
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Ten-page wraparound featuring an essay by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri.
Commentary
None.
1972 follow-up to Shaft
Shaft’s Big Score! by director Parks.
Documentary
Featuring curator Rhea L. Combs, film scholar Racquel J. Gates, filmmaker Nelson George, and music scholar Shana L. Redmond.
Soul in Cinema: Filming “Shaft” on Location (1974)
Archival interviews
With Parks, musician Isaac Hayes, and actor Roundtree.
Program 1
On Hayes’s score featuring Redmond.
Interview
With costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi.
60
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Ten-page wraparound featuring an essay by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri.
Commentary
None.
1972 follow-up to Shaft
Shaft’s Big Score! by director Parks.
Documentary
Featuring curator Rhea L. Combs, film scholar Racquel J. Gates, filmmaker Nelson George, and music scholar Shana L. Redmond.
Soul in Cinema: Filming “Shaft” on Location (1974)
Archival interviews
With Parks, musician Isaac Hayes, and actor Roundtree.
Program 1
On Hayes’s score featuring Redmond.
Interview
With costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi.
A Complicated Man: The “Shaft” Legacy (2019)
Trailers
Trailers
Extras Rating (0-40):
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