THE CONNECTION kicks off new film series at Museum of Arts & Design
THE CONNECTION (Shirley Clarke, 1962)
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 58th St. & Eighth Ave.
Friday, January 8, $10, 7:00
Series continues Friday nights through February 26
800-838-3006
madmuseum.org
www.milestonefilms.com
“Now look, you cats may know more about junk, see,” square film director Jim Dunn (William Redfield) says midway through The Connection, “but let me swing with this movie, huh?” Adapted by Jack Gelber from his play and directed and edited by Shirley Clarke, The Connection is a gritty tale of drug addicts awaiting their fix that was banned for obscenity after only two matinee screenings back in October 1962. In 2013, it was released in a sharp new fiftieth-anniversary print, beautifully restored by Ross Lipman of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, which you can see January 8 as it kicks off the Museum of Arts and Design’s new “Eye of a Director” series. The inaugural program, which continues on Friday nights through February 26, focuses on the work of Clarke and her daughter, documentary filmmaker Wendy Clarke. The Connection takes place in a New York City loft, where eight men are waiting for their man: Leach (Warren Finnerty), the ringleader who has an oozing scab on his neck; Solly (Jerome Raphael), an intelligent philosopher who speaks poetically about the state of the world; Ernie (Garry Goodrow), a sad-sack complainer who has pawned his horn but still clutches tight to the mouthpiece as if it were a pacifier; Sam (Jim Anderson), a happy dude who tells rambling stories while spinning a hula hoop; and a jazz quartet consisting of real-life musicians Freddie Redd on piano, Jackie McLean on sax, Larry Richie on drums, and Michael Mattos on bass. Dunn and his cameraman, J. J. Burden (Roscoe Lee Browne), are in the apartment filming the men as Dunn tries to up the drama to make it more cinematic as well as more genuine. “Don’t be afraid, man,” Leach tells him. “It’s just your movie. It’s not real.” When Cowboy (Carl Lee) ultimately shows with the stuff, Bible-thumping Sister Salvation (Barbara Winchester) at his side, things take a decidedly more drastic turn.
Mixing elements of the French New Wave with a John Cassavetes sensibility and cinema verité style, Clarke has made an underground indie classic that moves to the beat of an addict’s craving and eventual fix. Shot in a luridly arresting black-and-white by Arthur Ornitz, The Connection is like one long be-bop jazz song, giving plenty of time for each player to take his solo, with standout performances by McLean musically and Raphael verbally. The film-within-a-film narrative allows Clarke to experiment with the mechanics of cinema and challenge the audience; when Dunn talks directly into the camera, he is speaking to Burden, yet he is also breaking the fourth wall, addressing the viewer. Cutting between Burden’s steady camera and Dunn’s handheld one, Clarke adds dizzying swirls that rush past like a speeding subway train. A New York City native, Clarke, who died in Boston in 1997 at the age of seventy-seven, made such other films as The Cool World and Portrait of Jason and won an Academy Award for her 1963 documentary, Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World. The new print of The Connection is part of Milestone Films’ Shirley Clarke Project, which is preserving and restoring a quartet of her best work. The MAD series includes Ornette: Made in America, Portrait of Jason, and a shorts program as well as independent video artist Wendy Clarke’s Love Tapes, One on One, L.A. Link, and other films, the first time her work will be shown with that of her mother. “From my point of view, my mother could do anything,” Wendy Clarke, who will be at MAD for Q&As following screenings on February 5 and 12, explains on the series website. “She gave me the gift of gender confidence that she had to fight for. We had a very special relationship, one that not many artists that I know experienced. She was completely supportive of my work and we had long conversations about the potential of the video, film, dance, and painting mediums. My mother wanted us to show our work together and it has taken until the MAD retrospective for this to happen.”