Shaft (1971 film)
Shaft is a 1971 blaxploitation film which tells the story of a detective, John Shaft, who travels through Harlem and to the Italian mob in order to find the missing daughter of a black mobster. It stars Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, Gwenn Mitchell and Lawrence Pressman. The movie was adapted by Ernest Tidyman and John D.F. Black from the novel by Tidyman. It was directed by Gordon Parks.
Shaft's character embodied standard movie-detective coolness, but brought it to a new level by adding pronounced blackness. John Shaft was cool, confident, sexy, and represented the black point of view. In being rational, real, and afrocentric, Shaft outclassed other black stereotypes in the film, including black urban junkies, black activists and black gangsters.
A crucial scene emphasized Shaft's afrocentrism, and unwillingness to accept racial hypocrisy: Lt. Androzzi (a police detective) compares Shaft's skin tone to a black plastic Bic pen, saying "You're not so black." Shaft replies by holding up a white ceramic coffee cup, asserting "you ain't so white either."
It won an Academy Award for Best Music, Song for Isaac Hayes for "Theme from Shaft". It was nominated for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score.
Two sequels were made: Shaft's Big Score in 1972, and Shaft in Africa in 1973.
In 2000, a sequel was made featuring Samuel L. Jackson in the title role (see Shaft (2000 movie)). Jackson plays the nephew of Richard Roundtree's character; Roundtree makes a cameo appearance.
In 2000, the United States Library of Congress deemed the original film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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