Year: 1977
Director: Charles Burnett
Writer: Charles Burnett
Cinematographer: Charles Burnett
Cast: Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett, Eugene Cherry
Running Time: 83 min.
One of the unseen masterpieces of African American cinema, director Charles Burnett’s first feature film began life as a graduate student project at UCLA. First seen at festivals in 1977, but not released commercially until this year, Killer of Sheep presages the auteurist Black cinema of Spike Lee and John Singleton, yet retains a voice and style of its own. Nelson Kim, writing at sensesofcinema.com, notes that “Killer of Sheep, in broad outline, might seem like the kind of movie anybody could make. But nobody else has ever made anything like it.�
Using semi-documentary techniques and a cast of nonprofessional actors, Burnett creates an impressionistic yet finely detailed account of family and community ties within the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles. The film focuses on working-class father Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), who butchers sheep at a local slaughterhouse and suffers from job-related insomnia. But it also takes a close look at Stan’s family, friends and neighbors, all of whom endure grinding poverty and personal hardships. Burnett accompanies these personal stories with an eclectic mix of blues, jazz, pop and classical music.
Even though Killer of Sheep is set in 1970s Los Angeles, its stark black-and-white photography and unromantic depictions of working-class lives have led critics to compare the film with postwar Italian cinema. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott states that Burnett’s early films, including Killer, “testify to the vitality of a neorealist impulse that has never quite taken root in American cinema.â€? And writer-director Michael Tolkin — who presented his own film The Rapture at last year‘s Virginia Film Festival — has quipped, “If Killer of Sheep were an Italian film from 1953, we would have every scene memorized.â€?
In 1990, the Library of Congress selected Killer of Sheep as one of the first fifty films on its National Film Registry. In 2002, the National Society of Film Critics dubbed it one of the “100 Essential Films.� For its uncompromising portrayal of family and community life, Killer of Sheep has earned raves wherever it has played.
