The relationship between Lelia, a light-skinned black woman, and Tony, a white man is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh, and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was.
Acting
Non-actors improvising with devastating authenticity.
Direction
Cassavetes' handheld chaos births American independent cinema.
Sound
Charles Mingus score bleeds through every scene.
Director
John Cassavetes
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Cassavetes funded this by acting in TV shows he despised, then used the crew's lunch breaks to shoot.
This premiered the same year as Psycho—while Hitchcock perfected the system, Cassavetes burned it down.
US
