Film

Killer of Sheep (1977)

Director: Charles Burnett

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

From its acerbically blunt title downward, ‘Killer of Sheep’ is a comedy of sorts, albeit a comedy that – like the best of ’em – is about hardship, disenchantment and loneliness. Produced for the paltry sum of $10,000 as part of his film degree, Charles Burnett’s debut film – re-released after 30 years in legal limbo – is nothing short of a gorgeous, humanist miracle. Loosely flanking the woe-stricken day-to-day life of Stan (Henry G Sanders) – a reticent family man and slaughterhouse stiff living in LA’s Watts ghetto – the film comprises a series of jokes, social encounters and family ‘scenes’ that coalesce to create a rich and realistic (or so it feels) depiction of black urban America. In terms of story, that’s pretty much it, but for a film in which each frame bursts with texture, mood and an aching sensitivity towards life’s small moments of pain and euphoria, there’s little need for more.

As Stan toils, local youths pass the time in disused railway sidings, scuttling about aimlessly, throwing stones, fighting and laughing: these scenes are as rhapsodic as any in Malick’s ‘Days of Heaven’. Photographed in shimmering monochrome which is given additional depth with this polished new print, the film offers a firm rebuttal to black stereotypes in cinema while rendering the torpor of the daily grind as a prolonged and beautiful struggle for survival. Accompanied with auspicious music selections (from Gershwin to Dinah Washington) Burnett’s film is a singular achievement which offers the reassuring sidenote that other such treasures are out there just waiting to be unearthed.

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