Killer of Sheep (1977)

Director: Charles Burnett

Producer:Charles Burnett

Writer: Charles Burnett

Actors: Henry G, Sanders; Kaycee Moore; Angela Burnett

Cinematography: Charles Burnett

Music: Excellent

Rated: PG-13

Running time: 81 mins.

Watts after the rage.

         Killer of Sheep is a film written, directed, and produced by Charles Burnett in the early 1970s. Burnett finished work on it in 1979, but it was never released until 2007 owing to a dispute over the rights to the music Burnett used as background. In 1990 it was declared a national treasure when it was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry--- although few people had ever seen it.

           This movie is a piece of life film about a lower middle class African-American family trying to survive and maintain their dignity and integrity in the Watts district of South Central L.A a few years after the devastating Watts Riots of 1965. The environment they live in is a hostile one and life is a daily struggle for Stan (Henry G. Sanders), his wife (Kaycee Moore), their son (Jack Drummond) and daughter (Angela Burnett). 

           Stan works in a slaughter house, and his job is having the same effect on him as it has on the sheep he deals with and cleans up after--- it’s killing him. His wife (her name is never mentioned) is a housewife who feels deeply the draining stress her husband is going through in order to support his family and suffers from the lack of gentle affection that Stan is not able give her. His teenage son is becoming a lost cause and is being drawn evermore deeply into the crime culture rife in the community; his precocious little daughter, however, is wisdom personified who takes it all in and endures.

             Killer of Sheep is shot in a drama documentary style, similar to the neorealism  films of Rossellini and De Sica that came out of Italy after World War Two. There’s no discernible plot; it simply depicts a day in the life of people who, although Angelenos, are far from the glitter of Sunset Boulevard and the shining steel and glass of the Wilshire Corridor. The people portrayed are immigrants from a mostly rural Southern culture who for economic reasons and to escape an oppressive life find themselves in an alienating urban environment that seems to be stacked against them. 

             The story line, if you can call it that, involves the repair of a car, and Burnett  uses it as a metaphor for the endurance and simple determination of a people trying to survive and live a meaningful life. He inserts little scenes of warm humanity as when Stan and his wife in a tender moment slow dance to Dinah Washington’s This Bitter Earth in front of a shaded window, and when his wife adjusts her make-up and gazes at herself using a sauce pan as a mirror shortly before Stan comes home from work. He also gives a view of what Stan is up against in his attempt to keep his family together: when two local criminals try to enlist him in a job they’re planning, his wife has to chase them off; his kids play in a squalid landscape of destroyed buildings and vacant lots that resemble Berlin in the aftermath of World War Two; a local White merchant woman subtly propositions him when he comes into her store; and his friends seem to be stuck in a malaise as to doing anything to improve the situation--- pessimism and resignation dominate their lives. The simple act of going to the race track to spend a day away from their environment fails for Stan and his neighbors when the car (the same one they’ve been trying to repair) gets a flat on the way to Santa Anita, emphasizing the fact that no matter how they try they just can’t get out.

         In Killer of Sheep Burnett gives us a glimpse of the pessimism and despair of life in the post-riots Watts of the early seventies, which sadly would trigger worse riots twenty years later. But, more importantly, he also shows us the humanity and enduring spirit of a people who have gone through worse and have not given up on the American dream.