Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection (1977)

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  November 28, 2011

  rayman0071

  Charles Burnett's "Kiiler Of Sheep" slid into the world between two popular waves of Black American cinema,the "blaxploitation" period of the early to mid-1970's,and the Spike Lee-led charge of revitalization of the Black Cinema renaissance during the 1980's and 1990's,"Killer of... read more Sheep" fits in neither camp,being both daring and more quietly revolutionary than anything before those era,and it is one of those quality heartwarming black dramas of the 1970's right up there with "Sounder"(1972),and "Claudine"(1974),not to mention another heartwarming black family drama "Cornbread,Earl and Me"(1975).
  
  Writer-Producer-Director Burnett anchored his exploration of black American,inner-city life on the story of Stan(Henry G. Sanders),a quiet,unexceptional man who works in a slaughterhouse to support his young family. They live in present day,circa 1977, Watts, California which is a section of South Central Los Angeles, when urban struggle wasn't yet synonymous with the soul-crushing despair of drugs,drive-by shootings,and a unbreakable cycle of poverty. Although the bloody,backbreaking work that Stan does is what gives the film its title(a title that honors the fact the he does an honest day's work without complaint)the real thrust of the picture is in it's nostalgia for a kind of innocent that was already fading by the time the film was made in 1977,at the height of the blaxploitation era(which this film is nowhere in between that). in which in the celebration of it's characters. Scenes of children playing in worn-down front yards,making toys or finding any object whenever they can;a picnic is planned,and the plan goes astray on real-life terms;Stan crawls underneath a kitchen sink to fix a broken pipe while the camera lingers on his soft,curled body, In all,"Killer of Sheep" sounds so unremarkable,but its simplicity that the film gives throughout. Filmed on location in South Central Los Angeles in the section of Watts,and shot on a low budget in black and white and was released through an small independent company upon its release in 1977,"Killer of Sheep" is astounding for being one of the few American films in which black characters are not metaphors for something or someone else. They're not simply variation of stereotype,or merely passive victims of or snarling reactors to racism,class struggle,or the crush of American life. Burnett's camera pierces behind facades and public personas of American black ness to show the human beings beneath them, He paces the film leisurely so that we linger on faces and expressions. He captures imtimacy-between husband and wife,parent and child,and friends-with a documentarian's skill,so we feel as if we are privy to secrets,to sides of a black self that are not often displayed in cinema. And these sides are not often displayed. So much film that is about African-Americans is filtered through both a horrible real life history and an insidiously racist film industry that what is produced more often than not is ciphers with attitude who swagger,make wisecracks,
  and gun blast(or murder)through one contrived scene after another(and the industry stills act this way even today). At a running time of 83 minutes in length,Burnett shows the pace of the film,peels back layers,creates settings that are purposefully banal,and illuminates the spirit behind the flesh and bone, He doesn't try to dazzle you or overwhelm the viewer,but he gives you a chance to question all that you have seen or heard about blackness and the African-American experience that forces you to see and hear a new perspective on this in a whole new light.

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  August 12, 2010

  SirPant

  Killer of Sheep is raw but quite beautiful. Reminiscent of the French New wave, it reminded me of The 400 Blows, particularly during the scenes of the kids messing around near the train tracks. I've heard loads of speculative ideas about the sub-text, my favourite one being that ... read morethe Black man skinning the White sheep represents race revenge and technically makes it a revenge flick. I've also heard the idea that the title is a metaphor and that the poor black man is the sheep. All nonsense. The magic of this film is its linear narrative, it weaves in an out peoples life's without a story but in doing so tells thousands of storeys. Rarely has realism been better realised, it's handheld, black and white finish is perfect and shouldn't be passed off as amateur just because it was a student film. Charles Burnett is rightly regarded as a master film-maker of his generation, American cinema at its best! It's a shame the detail here on flixster are not very accurate, is this a film database or a just a DVD database?!

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  March 28, 2009

  flixsterman

  If you're looking for a plot with a beginning, a middle and an end, or characters that 'arc' and 'evolve' then you're better off renting Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings than Charles Burnett's artistically disjointed Killer of Sheep. It plays like a student film b... read moreecause that's exactly what it is. (Burnett submitted it as his master's thesis while attending the School of Film at UCLA.) This 70's depiction of life in the black ghetto of Watts is surprisingly reminiscent of earlier French new-wave films while still being unquestionably American in content. Its easy to see how Burnett's honest style later influenced black film makers like Spike Lee and John Singleton

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  December 6, 2008

  tsigur

  This movie is the exact opposite of that bullshit excuse of a movie called The Fist Foot Way. Plus, that movie had more money to work with and still couldn't touch what they did with this film. (By the way, I found out FFW was shot on film which makes it even more depressing). Bu... read morernett puts together some beautiful vignettes here. Sure, there is some acting that is suspect, but none of the non-professionals are annoying, in fact, one of the kids gives one of the most natural performances I have seen in a long time. This is a film that represents what independent film should be about. Not the Sundance, IFC channel, my father is a transexual and fighting in the war in Iraq which he totally disagrees with type indie. This is a film made for $10,000 and stands up against shit that was made for a hundred times more.

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  October 29, 2008

  gor41

  Historical curio with a documentary feel which highlights life in a poor black neighborhood of LA. Memorable images and well chosen music evoke the time and place. Few surprises, except a scene where a daughter and mother hold each others gaze as the daughter comforts the father... read more after he has rejected the mother's advances - unusual to see female jealousy expressed like this.

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  September 8, 2007

  adammahler1

  Mostly about one family, with some scenes of neighbors; it feels totally real, the story is just living, with struggling and everything else; like a neorealist masterpiece, & w/o one false note, totally unpretentious (and a student film!)

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  May 27, 2007

  dunmyer

  [size=3]Killer of Sheep was an underground movie made in a Black ghetto in 1977. It was recently restored and released to art houses as some kind of lost masterpiece.[/size]
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  [size=3][img]http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/festival/fp10/presimages/KillerofSheep.gif[/img][... read more/size]
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  [size=3]I love the idea of bringing renewed attention to the precious few movies made by Black Americans in the days before Spike Lee. But this movie is so awful that I think reviving it is an insult to Black filmmakers.[/size]
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  [size=3]All the filmmaker, Charles Burnett, did was bring his camera to poor Black neighborhoods and tell the folks to walk back and forth in front of the camera. Most of the time the people on camera don't know what to do.[/size]
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  [size=3]The rare time when they have lines to deliver, they do it in the absurd, phony way you see in pornographic films. The acting is almost uniformly atrocious. I certainly love the idea of cinema verite. But that only works when you find people who can be themselves at doing something compelling. These people just stand around, and nothing they say sounds like the words they would really speak to one another. Burnett was not able to pierce their world and get them to be themselves on camera. I grew up in a Black neighborhood in the 1970s, so I have some direct experience to bring to bear here.[/size]
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  [size=3]There are two serious actors in the film. One plays the eponymous sheep butcher, the other plays his wife. The scenes where the main character kills sheep seem incredibly real, so maybe Burnett found an actor whose day job was really killing sheep.[/size]
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  [size=3]I suppose Burnett felt the killing of the sheep was some kind of metaphor for poor Black life in the 1970s. But I couldn't see anything very meaningful in it. Maybe people roaming around aimlessly to him resembled sheep dumbly walking toward the slaughterhouse. This perhaps has some potential as an idea. Unfortunately Killer of Sheep doesn't explore it in a compelling way. The film became boring after about 15 minutes, and enduring its next 70 minutes was like Chinese water torture.[/size]
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  May 28, 2007

  gator681

  [font=Century Gothic]"Killer of Sheep" is an episodic film where Stan(Henry Gayle Sanders) is a married father of two who works long hours at a slaughterhouse for low pay under bad conditions in order to support his family. The movie does a very good job of capturing a poor but ... read morevibrant neighborhood but it is also rough and sketchy.[/font]
  [font=Century Gothic][/font]
  [font=Century Gothic]This is an early film by Charles Burnett who would later go on to direct "To Sleep with Anger" and "The Glass Shield."[/font]

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  December 29, 2008

  KLFilmmaker

  As far as independent films go, this is among the top of the class. Some amazing B&W photography that was captured without permits or budget. Great score too. This should be shown in film schools worldwide.

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  December 17, 2008

  littlecharmer1959

  A beautiful and raw film. The soundtrack is also fantastic.

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• Henry Sanders as Stan
• Kaycee Moore as Stan's Wife
• Charles Bracy
• Angela Burnett
• Eugene Cherry
• Jack Drummond
• Henry G. Sanders

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