Full disclosure: I'm not giving Shirley Clarke's The Cool World a "N/A" rating because I don't think it deserves one. Truth be told, I think that the film easily deserves an 8/10, perhaps even a 9/10. But I can't make that call because the only copy of the film that I could find was in terrible quality: the picture was grainy and the audio was so poor that if French subtitles hadn't been hard-coded onto it I wouldn't have been able to understand what they were saying most of the time. AND STILL I ended up loving The Cool World. It features a bold visual kineticism that predicts Martin Scorsese at his most frantic and a whole decade of grainy 70s New York City thrillers. The Cool World isn't just a screech of fury against the institutionalized racism that traps generations of minorities in systemic poverty and dooms many of their children to lives of crime and violence, it's a time capsule of a tragically overlooked urban ecosystem. If there is any justice in the world the film will get a full restoration IMMEDIATELY. Only then will I be able to give it a proper rating.
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