The Killer of Sheep (1974)

This movie was made by a film student at UCLA in the 1970's, and depicted Watts less than a decade after the Watts Riots.  One of the many ironies of the movie is that while it was made for about $10,000 it could not be distributed because the film maker, Charles Brunett, could not afford the musical rights to the sound track, which ended up being about $150,000.  Burnett's movie is about poor African Americans leading lives of quiet desperation, and the music that accompanies it is written for, by, and about African Americans.    The fact that Burnett himself was too poor to pay for the soundtrack to his classic movie is just one of the many complexities that surround the movie.

People who enjoy the classic Hollywood narrative will not relate to this movie.  It is a slowly unfolding story that goes nowhere slowly.  Stan is the man that the movie is named for--he works in a slaughterhouse killing sheep.  He is a quiet unhappy man leading a quiet unhappy life with his beautiful, tired wife.  Interspersed between scenes of Stan at work and at home are scenes of children at play in a desolate wasteland that would give middle class parents nightmares.  It is like scenes that have been filmed in third world countries, but it was filmed here, in Los Angeles, a city that would prefer to see itself as glamorous.  The movie slowly unfolds and abruptly ends but if you can allow yourself to be taken up in the atmosphere of it, it is well worth the journey into what amounts to a culutral immersion more than a story.