Gordon Parks

Shaft

Shaft

While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director Gordon Parks made this groundbreaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and introduced a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, in a career-defining role), a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. A vivid time capsule of gritty seventies Manhattan that has inspired sequels and multimedia reboots galore, the original Shaft is studded with indelible elements—from Roundtree’s sleek leather fashions to the iconic funk and soul score by Isaac Hayes.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1971
  • 100 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • English
  • Spine #1130

4K UHD + Blu-Ray Special Edition Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack remastered with creative input from Isaac Hayes III
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
  • Shaft’s Big Score!, the 1972 follow-up to Shaft by director Gordon Parks
  • New documentary featuring curator Rhea L. Combs, film scholar Racquel J. Gates, filmmaker Nelson George, and music scholar Shana L. Redmond
  • Soul in Cinema: Filming “Shaft” on Location (1971)
  • Archival interviews with Parks, musician Isaac Hayes, and actor Richard Roundtree
  • New program on Hayes’s score featuring Redmond
  • New interview with costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi
  • New program on the Black detective featuring scholar Kinohi Nishikawa and novelist Walter Mosley
  • A Complicated Man: The “Shaft” Legacy (2019)
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri
New cover by Bill Sienkiewicz

Purchase Options

4K UHD + Blu-Ray Special Edition Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack remastered with creative input from Isaac Hayes III
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
  • Shaft’s Big Score!, the 1972 follow-up to Shaft by director Gordon Parks
  • New documentary featuring curator Rhea L. Combs, film scholar Racquel J. Gates, filmmaker Nelson George, and music scholar Shana L. Redmond
  • Soul in Cinema: Filming “Shaft” on Location (1971)
  • Archival interviews with Parks, musician Isaac Hayes, and actor Richard Roundtree
  • New program on Hayes’s score featuring Redmond
  • New interview with costume designer Joseph G. Aulisi
  • New program on the Black detective featuring scholar Kinohi Nishikawa and novelist Walter Mosley
  • A Complicated Man: The “Shaft” Legacy (2019)
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri
New cover by Bill Sienkiewicz
Shaft
Cast
Richard Roundtree
John Shaft
Moses Gunn
Bumpy Jonas
Charles Cioffi
Vic Androzzi
Christopher St. John
Ben Buford
Gwenn Mitchell
Ellie Moore
Lawrence Pressman
Tom Hannon
Victor Arnold
Charlie
Sherri Brewer
Marcy
Drew Bundini Brown
Willy
Antonio Fargas
Bunky
Credits
Director
Gordon Parks
Produced by
Joel Freeman
Screenplay by
Ernest Tidyman
Screenplay by
John D. F. Black
From the novel by
Ernest Tidyman
Music by
Isaac Hayes
Music by
J. J. Johnson
Cinematography by
Urs Furrer
Editing by
Hugh A. Robertson
Costume design by
Joseph G. Aulisi

Current

Shaft: Power Moves
Shaft: Power Moves

By centering an empowered Black hero, Gordon Parks reimagined the detective genre and exposed its racial politics.

By Amy Abugo Ongiri

How the Movies Captured Times Square’s Grimy Golden Age
How the Movies Captured Times Square’s Grimy Golden Age

During a tumultuous period in New York’s history, movies like Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and Shaft found excitement and squalor in one of the city’s most infamous tourist attractions.

By Nathaniel Rich