The 1971 crime-action film Shaft did more than introduce audiences to John Shaft. The Richard Roundtree-led movie became one of the few profitable films released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that year and earned enough money to help the struggling studio avoid bankruptcy.
Directed by Gordon Parks, Shaft was released during a difficult period for MGM. Made on a relatively small budget, the film became a major box-office success. Time said the movie grossed an astonishing $13 million on a $500,000 budget. Other reports put its production and distribution costs at different figures, but the film’s strong profit is not in dispute.
Decades later, Shaft remains part of the conversation about the greatest action movies ever made. Collider ranked the 1971 film at No. 53 on its list of the “75 Best Action Movies of All Time,” calling it a classic action/crime movie that pushed boundaries for its time.
American actor Richard Roundtree points a gun at a suspect in a still from the film, ‘Shaft,’ directed by Gordon Parks, 1971.Photo by MGM Studios/Courtesy of Getty Images
The film also became an important title in the history of Black representation in Hollywood. Its success showed major studios that a movie centered on a Black hero and aimed strongly at a Black audience could attract a large paying audience.
Shaft arrived in theaters over the 1971 Independence Day weekend. At the time, its release did not look like the launch of a major blockbuster. The movie first played in only a small number of large-city downtown theaters before expanding to more locations.
That changed as audiences responded to the film.
Roundtree played John Shaft, a private detective working in New York. Shaft is hired by Harlem crime boss Bumpy Jonas, played by Moses Gunn, after Bumpy’s daughter is kidnapped by Italian mobsters.
The detective moves between Harlem’s criminal world, the police and the Mafia while trying to bring the young woman home. The story includes gunfights, street confrontations and a final rescue plan involving Shaft and his allies.
Roger Ebert described Parks’ movie as giving audiences “the first really convincing black private eye.” He also praised the way Shaft was allowed to fully enter the private-eye genre, including its violence, blood, obscenity and familiar plot devices.
The film’s success was especially important for MGM. According to IMDb, Shaft was one of only three profitable movies the studio released in 1971. The film earned millions against a much smaller production cost and became one of the movies that helped the financially troubled studio survive.
The Los Angeles Times gave a different accounting of the movie’s costs and earnings, reporting that it cost $1 million after advertising and other expenses and grossed $4.5 million. Variety later reported $7.656 million in theatrical rentals by 1976.
One of the key decisions behind Shaft was casting Richard Roundtree as John Shaft. The character was Black in Ernest Tidyman’s novel, but the original draft of the screenplay had changed Shaft into a white character.
Parks instead cast Roundtree, an African American actor whose role in the film became his first feature-film appearance.
Roundtree’s Shaft was different from many Black characters audiences had seen in major studio movies. He was confident, independent and presented as the central hero of his own story.
Parks had already directed The Learning Tree in 1969. Shaft became his second feature and his first major commercial success.
The movie was filmed in Harlem, Greenwich Village and Times Square, giving it a modern New York setting. Its urban locations helped separate it from earlier Hollywood stories that often presented Black characters through settings and viewpoints that did not reflect contemporary Black city life.
Rotten Tomatoes lists Shaft with an 88% Tomatometer score based on 97 critic reviews, while its audience score stands at 68% from more than 10,000 ratings.
The movie’s influence continued long after its original theatrical run. In 2000, the Library of Congress selected Shaft for preservation in the National Film Registry because it was considered “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Shaft eventually led to two direct sequels, Shaft’s Big Score! in 1972 and Shaft in Africa in 1973. A 2000 film starring Samuel L. Jackson followed, with Roundtree returning as John Shaft. Another Shaft movie arrived in 2019.
More than five decades after its release, the original Shaft remains closely linked to the rise of 1970s blaxploitation cinema, the growth of Black-led commercial movies and MGM’s difficult financial period in 1971.
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