JACKIE MCLEAN/FREDDIE REDD: The Connection (DVD)

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A MYTHIC MOVIE ABOUT JUNKIES IN A NEW YORK LOFT

“The Connection” -based on the Living Theatre`s production of Jack Gelber`s play- is a film about junkies waiting their drug “connection” inside a seedy New York City apartment. Directed by a remarkable woman and a crucial filmmaker: Shirley Clarke (1919-1997), this film is a landmark of the American New Wave movement. Utilizing a New York version of Italian neo-realism, Clarke`s work remains the best expression of marginal life in that era. It is a frank study of heroin addicts -so frank that it was banned by the New York State film censors.

“The Connection” combined "real" people with such familiar professional performers as William Redfield (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), Roscoe Lee Browne (narrator of “Babe: Pig in the City”), and Warren Finnerty (“Easy Rider”).

The music featured throughout is some of the best jazz of that era that you will ever see, composed by the pianist-writer Freddie Redd (described by Ira Gitler as “one of the warmer disciples of the Bud Powell school”), and performed by his quartet with altoist Jackie McLean, bassits Michael Mattos and drummer Larry Ritchie. The film itself will remind you of one of Cassavetes early films, think “Shadows”, but it`s the music that will make it priceless.

“The Connection” got a prize at Cannes Film Festival.