Killer of Sheep
Encyclopedia
Killer of Sheep is a 1977
American film
written, directed, produced and shot by Charles Burnett
. It features Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, and Charles Bracy, among others. The drama depicts the culture
of urban
African-Americans in Los Angeles
' Watts
district. The film's style is often likened to Italian neorealism
.
At the time of its completion the film could not be released because the filmmakers had not secured rights to the music used in the film. The rights were purchased in 2007 at a cost of US$
150 000 and the film was restored and transferred from a 16mm to a 35mm print. Killer of Sheep received a limited release
30 years after it was completed, with a DVD
release in late 2007.
describes the film plot as "a collection of brief vignettes which are so loosely connected that it feels at times like you're watching a non-narrative film." There are no acts, plot arcs or character development, as conventionally defined.
Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) works long hours at a slaughterhouse in Watts
, Los Angeles
. The monotonous slaughter affects his home life with his unnamed wife (Kaycee Moore) and two children, Stan Jr. and Angela (Jack Drummond and Burnett’s niece, Angela).
Through a series of episodic events — some friends try to involve Stan in a criminal plot, a white woman propositions Stan in a store, Stan and his friend Bracy (Charles Bracy) attempt to buy a car engine — a mosaic of an austere working-class life emerges in which Stan feels unable to affect the course of his life.
. It was shot in Watts on a budget of less than US$
10,000 over roughly a year's worth of weekends in 1972 and 1973, with additional shooting in 1975. In 1977, Burnett submitted the film as his Master of Fine Arts
thesis at the School of Film at the University of California, Los Angeles
. Burnett stated that he also intended to make the film a history of African-American music and filled it with music from a variety of genres and different eras.
, Paul Robeson
, Louis Armstrong
and Earth, Wind and Fire. It remained in obscurity for nearly thirty years, garnering much critical and academic praise and earning a reputation as a lost classic.
Killer of Sheep has been likened by a number of critics and scholars to the work of Italian neorealist directors, particularly Vittorio De Sica
and Roberto Rossellini
, for his documentary aesthetic and use of mostly non-professional, on-location actors. Burnett has also been compared to Yasujiro Ozu
for his strong sense of composition, Stanley Kubrick
for his sharp ear for juxtaposing popular music with images, John Cassavetes
for his knack for coaxing natural performances from amateur actors, and Robert Altman
for his interest in the minutiae of human interaction. Burnett's self-professed influences are Jean Renoir
, Basil Wright
, and Federico Fellini
, all of whom are high examples of the tender, humane and compassionate qualities for which Burnett has been praised, qualities which are intensely present in Killer of Sheep. Movie critic Andrew O'Hehir, noting the strong influences of Renoir, Rosselini and Satyajit Ray
, said, "It's hard to overemphasize how strange and ambitious and completely out of context it was for a black urban filmmaker with no money and no reputation to make that kind of movie in 1977."
The film was chosen by the National Society of Film Critics
as one of the 100 Essential Films. In 1990, Killer of Sheep was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
by the Library of Congress
for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
. The soundtrack, which had not been licensed, was also paid for at a cost of over US$150 000.
On March 30, 2007, it opened in select theaters in the United States and Canada and was released on DVD on November 13, 2007 as part of a deluxe box set with a director's cut of Burnett's sophomore feature My Brother's Wedding and three Burnett shorts: Several Friends (a 1969 aesthetic precursor to Killer of Sheep), The Horse (an "allegory of the South" in Burnett's words), and When It Rains (praised as one of the greatest short films of all time by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
).
On January 21, 2008 (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) Turner Classic Movies
presented the world broadcast premiere of the movie as part of a night-long marathon of Burnett's movies. Burnett was interviewed before and after the movie by TCM's Prime Time host Robert Osborne
.
1977 in film
The year 1977 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*In the Academy Awards, Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight win Best Actor and Actress and Supporting Actress awards for Network....
American film
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
written, directed, produced and shot by Charles Burnett
Charles Burnett (director)
Charles Burnett is an African-American film director, film producer, writer, editor, actor, photographer, and cinematographer...
. It features Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore, and Charles Bracy, among others. The drama depicts the culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
of urban
Urban culture
Urban culture is the culture of towns and cities. In the United States, Urban culture may also sometimes be used as a euphemistic reference to contemporary African American culture.- African American culture :...
African-Americans in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
' Watts
Watts, Los Angeles, California
Watts is a mostly residential neighborhood in South Los Angeles, California.-History:The area now known as Watts is located on the Rancho La Tajauta Mexican land grant...
district. The film's style is often likened to Italian neorealism
Neorealism (art)
In art, neorealism was established by the ex-Camden Town Group painters Charles Ginner and Harold Gilman at the beginning of World War I. They set out to explore the spirit of their age through the shapes and colours of daily life...
.
At the time of its completion the film could not be released because the filmmakers had not secured rights to the music used in the film. The rights were purchased in 2007 at a cost of US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
150 000 and the film was restored and transferred from a 16mm to a 35mm print. Killer of Sheep received a limited release
Limited release
Limited release is a term in the American motion picture industry for a motion picture that is playing in a select few theaters across the country ....
30 years after it was completed, with a DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
release in late 2007.
Plot
Movie critic Dana StevensDana Stevens (critic)
Dana Shawn Stevens is a movie critic at Slate magazine. She is also a regular on the magazine's weekly cultural podcast the Culture Gabfest.-Life and career:Stevens grew up in Scarsdale, New York...
describes the film plot as "a collection of brief vignettes which are so loosely connected that it feels at times like you're watching a non-narrative film." There are no acts, plot arcs or character development, as conventionally defined.
Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders) works long hours at a slaughterhouse in Watts
Watts, Los Angeles, California
Watts is a mostly residential neighborhood in South Los Angeles, California.-History:The area now known as Watts is located on the Rancho La Tajauta Mexican land grant...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. The monotonous slaughter affects his home life with his unnamed wife (Kaycee Moore) and two children, Stan Jr. and Angela (Jack Drummond and Burnett’s niece, Angela).
Through a series of episodic events — some friends try to involve Stan in a criminal plot, a white woman propositions Stan in a store, Stan and his friend Bracy (Charles Bracy) attempt to buy a car engine — a mosaic of an austere working-class life emerges in which Stan feels unable to affect the course of his life.
Production
The film was directed by Charles BurnettCharles Burnett (director)
Charles Burnett is an African-American film director, film producer, writer, editor, actor, photographer, and cinematographer...
. It was shot in Watts on a budget of less than US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
10,000 over roughly a year's worth of weekends in 1972 and 1973, with additional shooting in 1975. In 1977, Burnett submitted the film as his Master of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
thesis at the School of Film at the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
. Burnett stated that he also intended to make the film a history of African-American music and filled it with music from a variety of genres and different eras.
Cast
- Henry G. Sanders as Stan
- Kaycee Moore as Stan's wife
- Charles Bracy as Bracy
- Angela Burnett as Stan's daughter
- Eugene Cherry as Eugene
- Jack Drummond as Stan's son
Critical reception
Though the film won the Critics' Award at the Berlin Film Festival it never saw popular release due to complications in securing the music rights for the 22 songs on the soundtrack, which included such big names as Dinah WashingtonDinah Washington
Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones , was an American blues, R&B and jazz singer. She has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s", and called "The Queen of the Blues"...
, Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
and Earth, Wind and Fire. It remained in obscurity for nearly thirty years, garnering much critical and academic praise and earning a reputation as a lost classic.
Killer of Sheep has been likened by a number of critics and scholars to the work of Italian neorealist directors, particularly Vittorio De Sica
Vittorio de Sica
Vittorio De Sica was an Italian director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement....
and Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
, for his documentary aesthetic and use of mostly non-professional, on-location actors. Burnett has also been compared to Yasujiro Ozu
Yasujiro Ozu
was a prominent Japanese film director and script writer. He is known for his distinctive technical style, developed during the silent era. Marriage and family, especially the relationships between the generations, are among the most persistent themes in his body of work...
for his strong sense of composition, Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
for his sharp ear for juxtaposing popular music with images, John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
for his knack for coaxing natural performances from amateur actors, and Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
for his interest in the minutiae of human interaction. Burnett's self-professed influences are Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
, Basil Wright
Basil Wright
Basil Wright, , was a documentary filmmaker, film historian, film critic and teacher.-Biography:...
, and Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
, all of whom are high examples of the tender, humane and compassionate qualities for which Burnett has been praised, qualities which are intensely present in Killer of Sheep. Movie critic Andrew O'Hehir, noting the strong influences of Renoir, Rosselini and Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature...
, said, "It's hard to overemphasize how strange and ambitious and completely out of context it was for a black urban filmmaker with no money and no reputation to make that kind of movie in 1977."
The film was chosen by the National Society of Film Critics
National Society of Film Critics
The National Society of Film Critics is an American film critic organization. As of December 2007 the NSFC had approximately 60 members who wrote for a variety of weekly and daily newspapers.-History:...
as one of the 100 Essential Films. In 1990, Killer of Sheep was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Lists
The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.- 1st - Ed Gonzalez, Slant MagazineSlant MagazineSlant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
- 2nd - Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-GazetteArkansas Democrat-GazetteThe Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is the newspaper of record in the U.S. state of Arkansas, printed in Little Rock with a northwest edition published in Lowell...
- 3rd - Glenn Kenny, PremierePremiere (magazine)Premiere was an American and New York City-based film magazine published by Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., published between the years 1987 and 2007. The original version of the magazine, Première , was started in France in 1976 and is still being published there.-History:The magazine originally...
- 3rd - Michael Sragow, The Baltimore SunThe Baltimore SunThe Baltimore Sun is the U.S. state of Maryland’s largest general circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries....
- 3rd - Nick Schager, Slant MagazineSlant MagazineSlant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
- 3rd - Richard Corliss, TIME magazineTime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
- 5th - Dana Stevens, SlateSlate (magazine)Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
- 10th - Ella Taylor, LA WeeklyLA WeeklyLA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized "alternative weekly" in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas...
Distribution
Having previously only existed on worn 16mm prints, the film was restored and enlarged to 35mm by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Milestone Films, thanks in part to a donation from filmmaker Steven SoderberghSteven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
. The soundtrack, which had not been licensed, was also paid for at a cost of over US$150 000.
On March 30, 2007, it opened in select theaters in the United States and Canada and was released on DVD on November 13, 2007 as part of a deluxe box set with a director's cut of Burnett's sophomore feature My Brother's Wedding and three Burnett shorts: Several Friends (a 1969 aesthetic precursor to Killer of Sheep), The Horse (an "allegory of the South" in Burnett's words), and When It Rains (praised as one of the greatest short films of all time by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
).
On January 21, 2008 (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
presented the world broadcast premiere of the movie as part of a night-long marathon of Burnett's movies. Burnett was interviewed before and after the movie by TCM's Prime Time host Robert Osborne
Robert Osborne
Robert Jolin Osborne is an American actor and film historian best known as the primary host for Turner Classic Movies, and previously a host of The Movie Channel.-Life and career:...
.