for him in the recording studio. Another difference between the versions is that Ben's statement "I've learned a lesson" comes at the end of the second version, conveying to the viewer that Ben will improve himself after receiving such a cruel beating. This brings a sense of moral closure to the film. In the first version, the fight and Ben's statement appear halfway through the film, following which he is shown doing the same things again, having failed to learn his lesson. Thus, Ben is portrayed as unlikely ever to change his ways in the first version. Reception In his December 1959 manifesto "A Call for a New Generation of Film Makers", Mekas said that Shadows was the start of a new movement that would inspire independent filmmakers, energize the flagging avant-garde film scene, and triumph over the commercial Hollywood film industry. Even so, he was upset that the film had been reworked. In January 1960, he wrote in his movie-review column in The Village Voice that the 1959 version was commercialized, "just another Hollywood film", and that everything he had praised in the first version had been "completely destroyed". Later in his life, he said that the first version should have never been remade, but that the second version was a better indication of the direction in which Cassavetes was going as a filmmaker. Shadows was given the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. Cassavetes obtained distribution through British Lion in 1961. Legacy The film was shocking to American audiences in the late 1950s and early 1960s because it turned the "concept of race upside down". Two of the principal actors portraying African-Americans were not actually black: Goldoni was born in the U.S. to Sicilian parents, fully European in heritage, and Carruthers was only one-sixteenth black. Carruthers used a sunlamp to darken his skin during the 1957 shooting of the film, but in 1959 for the new scenes, he abandoned this effort. Carruthers and Goldoni were married in 1960, but quickly divorced. After Shadows was honored by the Venice Film Festival, the international publicity helped it become the first American film to see success outside of the Hollywood system. Shadows joined Pull My Daisy and Shirley Clarke's The Connection to establish a new wave of American independent films. In 1993, Shadows was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as