The Cool World

Shirley Clarke / US, 1963 / 125 min.

Cinema Verité with a cool jazz score (by Dizzy Gillespie), but also the herald of the Blaxploitation genre. Shirley Clarke's The Cool World, about a black teenager in Harlem who wants to become a gang leader at all costs, still proudly stands after almost sixty years as the cinematic equivalent of a rousing but controlled jazz improvisation.