Killer of Sheep

Directed by Charles Burnett

Prediction: Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep will not get the same self-intoxicated “best picture of the year” acclaim that critics gave to Army of Shadows last year, even though Killer of Sheep—a far superior movie—is also decades-old and finally receiving belated theatrical release in the United States. The difference is that Killer of Sheep doesn’t allow viewers to congratulate themselves on bygone political stances. Although set in the mid-1970s “present,” Burnett’s classic film is very much a distillation of the social and spiritual effects of American poverty (and racism). That’s the ever-present subject critics used Jean-Pierre Melville’s WWII soporific to escape.

When the defeated Los Angeles slaughterhouse worker Stan (Henry G. Sanders) suddenly rouses himself to declare, “I ain’t poor!” it may be the scariest and most reverberant line heard in any American movie (at least since Scarlett O’Hara vowed, “I’ll never be hungry again!”). Poverty, and its many—even psychological—manifestations is the one subject that American movies have, over time, learned to ignore. (Even recent black filmmakers like Chris Rock and Will Smith find it necessary to idolize the black middleclass through fantasy and falsification.) Burnett accepts the reality of poverty as a means of focusing on the styles of life to which he bears dramatic witness. These lifestyles (Stan, his wife, their two children, several feckless friends) were also ignored by ’70s blaxploitation movies, thus prompting Burnett to make Killer of Sheep (his 1975 UCLA thesis film) as a much-needed corrective.

It immediately stood out and still holds singular fascination and power. Novelist/filmmaker Michael Tolkin famously said, “If Killer of Sheep were an Italian film from 1953, we would have every scene memorized.” But the political biases that favor Italian Neorealism (and Iranian films and Army of Shadows) don’t work in favor of African-American filmmakers who dare to claim serious artistry. The life on view in Killer of Sheep can neither be fetishized nor sentimentalized. It’s a one-of-a-kind, quietly powerful American masterpiece.

Burnett’s mode isn’t realism (classical or neo). Killer of Sheep plays out in discrete segments that are structured to encourage a sympathetic and enlightened response to Burnett’s stark observations of behavior. The sharper your perception, the deeper the film will affect you. Its method of overlaying mundane events with blues, spirituals and jazz, is both sophisticated and authentic.

Although Killer of Sheep was occasionally exhibited over the years at museums and festivals, it was always too serious, too artful, too devastating for conventional film distributors. You could say showing it risks revolution—or bankruptcy. Movies about black Americans are subject to severe commercial restrictions, which is why sensationalist junk like Black Snake Moan received inordinate attention. Now that the enterprising Milestone Films has restored Burnett’s debut and arranged its theatrical showing at the IFC Center (and later across the country), perhaps Killer of Sheep will gain its rightful place in the memories of all moviegoers.