Shirley Clarke's THE COOL WORLD (1963)
The Cool World, which is a *difficult film to see in the 21st century, is not a perfect film but one that grabbed me and wouldn't let me go for its 105 minute run-time in showing me an imperfect world (and then some), and that still feels special and vital to me, especially as I get older. It's one thing to see an independent work, something very much on the fringes or the "Avant-Garde" as it was called (another way to put it is just outside of Hollywood, and that could be Stanley Kubrick with his first film Killer's Kiss or what Stan Brakhage was doing or Cassavetes with Shadows), and to appreciate it under Sociological grounds like "Oh, here's how this world was at the time, isn't that interesting" blah-blah-blah. It's another to see a director sort of throttle you to the ground with their honest approach to showing the world. The Cool World does that much the same way that Night of the Living Dead would do a few years after this, thoug...
