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The Connection Photos

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Movie Info

In a cramped and dirty apartment, eight junkies variously goof off, chat and play jazz music while waiting for their heroin connection to show up. They've also struck a deal with documentary filmmaker Jim Dunn (William Redfield) : They'll let him film them provided he pays for their drugs. When the dealer, Cowboy (Carl Lee), arrives, he's suspicious of the filmmaker and his camera, enough so that Dunn considers trying heroin himself to prove he's no narc and to better understand his subjects.

Genre:

drama
Original Language:

English
Director:

Shirley Clarke
Producer:

Lewis M. Allen, Shirley Clarke
Writer:

Jack Gelber
Release Date (Theaters):

Oct 3, 1962 wide
Release Date (Streaming):

Nov 20, 2016
Runtime:

1h 50m
Production Co:

The Connection Company
Sound Mix:

Mono

Cast & Crew

Warren Finnerty
Leach

Garry Goodrow
Ernie

James Anderson
Sam

Jerome Raphael
Solly

Carl Lee
Cowboy

Barbara Winchester
Sister Salvation

Show all Cast & Crew

News & Interviews for The Connection

Definitive Jazz Movies

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Critic Reviews for The Connection

All Critics (21) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (20) | Rotten (1)

For Shirley Clarke's direction there can be nothing but praise... This is a film with more creative flair than any that has come out of America for years.

February 11, 2020 | Full Review…

Penelope Gilliatt
Sight and Sound
The Connection is not a great movie but it is a singular and multi-faceted historical artifact.

March 7, 2019 | Full Review…

J. Hoberman
The New York Review of Books
With so much to offer, the picture can be excused from the duties of entertainment in the pleasurable sense.

September 21, 2018 | Full Review…

Archer Winsten
New York Post
The quartet of musicians, led by the pianist and composer Freddie Redd and the caustic-toned post-bop saxophonist Jackie McLean, perform brilliantly on-camera as they dramatize both the agonized wait and the needed high.

January 4, 2016 | Full Review…

Richard Brody
New Yorker
A lean, mean saga of jazz, junk and rebellion.

May 4, 2012 | Full Review…

Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com
The junkies, as expected, are the real show, and it's here that the theatrical predilections emerge, less "that Barton Fink feeling" and more The Iceman Cometh.

May 3, 2012 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…

Jaime N. Christley
Slant Magazine
Director Shirley Clarke's performance background strongly influences this carefully paced, masterfully acted, beautifully scored drama.

February 25, 2021 | Full Review…

Amelie Lasker
FF2 Media
The danger was that it would be just a photographed stage play. Miss Clarke has avoided this partly by brilliant technical effects, but chiefly by using the camera as the voyeur's eye of the director who is supposed to be making a documentary.

July 30, 2019 | Full Review…

Dwight MacDonald
Esquire Magazine
Experimental theater meets cinéma verité with a self-aware sensibility: drama in documentary form.

March 30, 2017 | Full Review…

Sean Axmaker
Seanax.com
It's experimental theater meets cinéma verité with a self-aware sensibility: a drama in documentary form.

March 14, 2015 | Full Review…

Sean Axmaker
Parallax View
An uncompromising look at a group of drug addicts waiting in a Manhattan loft for a heroin fix.

February 24, 2015 | Rating: B+ | Full Review…

Dennis Schwartz
Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
Whatever its place on the scale of so-called authenticity, 'The Connection' is concerned with many of the same issues as its more legitimately underground successors. As someone in the movie observes: 'The question is, like why ain't we dead, y'know?'

October 9, 2012 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…

John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)