Shirley Clarke’s first feature is an electrifying adaptation of Jack Gelber’s controversial play The Connection, described by Kenneth Tynan at the time as “the most exciting new American play that off-Broadway has produced since the war.”

An enthusiastic young director films a group of junkies as they talk, bicker and improvise jazz whilst waiting for their drug “connection”. It’s a deceptively simple premise behind which lies an absorbing exploration of desperate, literate characters, caught in limbo with nowhere to go except inwards. Although theatrical, the performances, mainly by members of New York’s famous Living Theatre, cohere to achieve a perfect balance, creating and occupying their own heightened world of circular “dead” time. Joining the ensemble cast in the latter stages is one Carl Lee (“Cowboy”), a powerful black actor who would become an important part of Clarke’s life and prove instrumental in the further development of her career.

Also amongst the excellent cast are Blue Note legends Jackie McLean and Freddie Redd, reprising their roles from the stage version. Although appearing to casually provide the all-important soundtrack spontaneously, Redd and Mclean’s “improvised” jazz backdrop was actually developed during the run of the stage show. By the time Clarke embarked on the making of the film, their original musical sketches had grown into fully formed be-bop classics. Indeed, this deception mirrors one of the key factors in the evolution of The Connection: the play, also supposedly improvised and featuring “real” junkies, becoming a film in which Clarke cleverly reworks the device via the additional dimension to comment on the “honesty” of her peers.

Shirley Clarke’s razor-sharp, effortlessly cool debut feature was the beginning of a sparse but crucial feature career that would spawn a handful of truly incredible films, the cinematic value of which is undoubtedly beyond measure. The Connection is a milestone.