Humphrey Bogart is alive and well and living in Harlem. His skin is black, but he lives with it. His private eye affairs are still more quixotic than lucrative. His lip still curls when the police chief threatens to withdraw his licence unless he cooperates. Laconic, sardonic, and only just on the right side of the law, he is now called John Shaft….
Dark alleys and red herrings, exotic sirens and prowling gunmen, sinister encounters and strange alliances, all the familiar icons come tumbling out as engagingly as they used to in the Forties thrillers, freshly minted by being seen through the eyes of a black director. Like Cotton Comes to Harlem, Shaft leaves the racial thing to take care of itself in some edgy observation, and lets in a welcome breath of fresh air by having its black characters behave like people rather than walking advertisements for Black Power or Liberal Conscience. The result is as wittily enjoyable as Ossie Davis's film and much more stylish.
It is perhaps a pity that Gordon Parks' first film, The Learning Tree, has yet to be released in Britain, since Shaft is so unpretentious that the excellence of his direction is likely to go unnoticed. Not that The Learning Tree is a masterpiece: its nostalgic recollection of a Southern childhood is a shade too bitter-sweet, too Carson McCullers-ish, for absolute comfort. But it reveals a sensitivity to actors and settings which is confirmed, less obviously, by Shaft.
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