The Cool World
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The Cool World
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1994.
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The Cool World is a 1963 feature film directed by Shirley Clarke about African-American life in the Royal Pythons, a youth gang in Harlem. The film is based on 1959 novel by Warren Miller, The Cool World had been adapted for the stage by the author and Robert Rossen, an Oscar-winning screenwriter and director.
Why It's a Cool World
- It's considered by many to be a masterwork of cinéma-vérité composition.
- The film was a deliberate attempt to provoke filmgoers grown complacent on a diet of Hollywood movies.
- A six-minute pre-credit sequence shot on the streets of Harlem sets the tone: as a sidewalk preacher delivers a withering anti-white sermon, a teenage gang member tries to buy a handgun before embarking on a class trip down Fifth Avenue to Wall Street.
- The pulsing jazz on the soundtrack (from artists like Dizzy Gillespie) and the documentary-like camerawork assaulted viewers, most of whom had never seen this world before.
- Decent acting from the majority of the cast despite most of them having little or no prior experience in films
- Carl Lee, who had also appeared in Clarke's previous film, The Connection, took the role of Priest, a small-time pimp and con artist who gets in trouble with the mob.
- Juvenile delinquent Duke Curtis was portrayed by Hampton "Rony" Clanton, who was a teenager at the time of shooting.
- For the overall storyline, Duke wants to get enough money to buy a Colt handgun from Priest, as he thinks it'll make him president of the Royal Pythons Gang, and wants to be known as a cold killer. There's not much of a narrative there. Clarke's collaborator Carl Lee, refashioned the novel into something that would more closely approximate actual conditions on the streets of Harlem. Most of the film follows the outlines of Miller’s novel, but it can shift the focus of the story in ways that weren't available on stage.
- When Duke and his girlfriend Luanne go to Coney Island, for example, Clarke can slow the pace down to dwell on boardwalk arcade games, the empty beach, and the only truly open sky in the film. Scenes set in the Python clubhouse have the uncertain timing and unfocused conversations of real life, the result of extensive improvisations and rehearsals.
- While rival independent films had already opened theatrically, films such as John Cassavetes' Shadows still used actors to tell actorly stories about love and jealousy and show business ambition. And West Side Story (1961) featured a sanitized Harlem in which gangs danced in chorus lines and teen lovers inadvertently acted out Shakespeare. The Cool World, with its sprawling gang rumbles and sadistic sex, was like a slap to both schools of filmmaking.
The Only Bad Quality
- Some awkward acting in various different areas, such as Duke Curtis not always being able to keep a straight face during his love scenes.
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