Sight&Sound - 11.2019

November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 17

Beyond using jazz for either soundtrack or subject

matter, Clarke’s overall approach to making films

shares certain qualities with the musical genre,

emphasising improvised performance, changes

in dramatic intensity, syncopated editing and –

often in appearance only – an absence of script.

By the late 1950s, Clarke became increasingly

occupied with documentary filmmaking. She

worked with Willard Van Dyke, Richard Leacock

and D.A. Pennebaker, among others, on a series of

three-and-a-half-minute film loops for the 1958

Brussels World’s Fair. With Van Dyke, she also

co-directed Skyscraper (1959), a documentary

on the construction of the Tishman building on

Fifth Avenue, and a young Frederick Wiseman

produced The Cool World. Critical of the premise

that cinema could objectively document events,

Clarke didn’t always see eye to eye with these

filmmakers. As the film scholar Lauren Rabinovitz

argues: “Clarke denied the possibility of any such

intuitive objectivity by emphasising the inherent

subjectivity in the cinematic process itself.”

The Connection employs cinéma vérité techniques

within a narrative framework to expose their

limitations as a means of accessing ‘truth’. Based

on Jack Gelber’s contentious off-Broadway play,

it follows a director making a film about a group

of junkies waiting for their ‘connection’ to deliver

a heroin fix. Intertitles claim the film has been

constructed from found footage shot in an addict’s

apartment by documentary filmmaker Jim Dunn,

and handed over to cameraman J.J. Burden, who

pieced together the film as “honestly” as possible.

Even during its moments of seeming spontaneity,

it’s clear we’re watching a drama; Clarke would

later complain that the cinematography was “too

slick”. Nevertheless, The Connection’s over-stylised

performances and theatrical approach to blocking

actors contribute to undoing the illusion of realism.

The desperate attempts of a white bourgeois

filmmaker to capture ‘authentic’ Beat life while

manipulating the action are also sent up. “I’m

just trying to make an honest human document,”

Dunn whines as he intently refocuses his camera.

Clarke’s digs at the earnestness and duplicity of

the male documentary filmmaker are delicious.

For her next feature, The Cool World, a

docudrama about black street gangs, the

cinematography was to be far less slick. The

film follows teenage boy Duke as he struggles

to escape his difficult situation by climbing the

ranks of the Royal Pythons, a Harlem gang. The

Cool World cleverly merges techniques drawn

from narrative, documentary and experimental

filmmaking: on-location shooting, mobile

camerawork and non-professional actors

emphasise cinematic realism, while the film’s

kinetic montages of Harlem street life recall her

formalist early films. Fêted for being the first

commercial film shot on location in Harlem,

the crew largely avoided tripods, choosing to

keep the cameras close to their characters as

they chase the limited opportunities available to

them. Clarke adapted Warren Miller’s 1959 novel

with her creative and romantic partner Carl Lee,

who played Cowboy in The Connection. A Harlem

native, Lee recruited young performers from

the neighbourhood, and made sure the film’s

portrayal of life on the streets was accurate. With

its largely empathetic depiction of the contexts

leading to urban crime, The Cool World has

become a landmark of African-American cinema.

The dramatic tension in Portrait of Jason,

Clarke’s study of black gay hustler Jason Holliday,

rests on the shifting and imbalanced power

relations between filmmaker and subject. Much

like Andy Warhol’s film portraiture, particularly

Chelsea Girls (1966), Clarke turns the camera

on to the performance of personality. Shot in

her Chelsea Hotel apartment in one boozy 12-

hour session, the film records Jason’s extended

monologue of outré anecdotes and musical

skits. Cracks soon start to emerge in the well-

honed routine: he cries, falls exhausted on a

bed and interacts wildly with an increasingly

confrontational film crew. By the end of the film,

the veracity of his story is put into question:

“Be honest, motherfucker, stop that acting will

you?” barks Lee off screen. Unable to pierce

the mask of his personality, or to access the

‘truth’ of what happened between him and the

crew, Portrait of Jason leaves several questions

unanswered. Jason’s moments of vulnerability

also implicate us as viewers, unsure if we are

complicit in the spectacle of his torment. Jason

tells the camera that “people love to see you

suffer”, and he might just be talking about us.

As a female director in a largely male-

dominated industry, Clarke frequently spoke

of how her identification with outcasts was

informed by a feeling of not belonging in a man’s

world. In Noël Burch and André S. Labarthe’s

documentary portrait of the filmmaker for French

television, Rome Is Burning (1970), Clarke observes:

“The woman and the black American male have

in common a psyche, and a problem, and a reality,

and are the closest at being able to understand

each other.” By this logic, then, the black woman

experiences a double oppression, but the point

is never raised, and the conversation moves on.

If Clarke’s identification with the black ‘Other’

feels like a difficult pill to swallow, we can see

at least how the space she opens up for Jason

to speak is a markedly political gesture. Jason’s

chameleonic performance – at turns amusing

and tragic, often in the same breath – unveils how

mainstream American society has repeatedly

marginalised him: for his blackness, for his

queerness, for a lifestyle incompatible with its so-

called values. Clarke saw Jason’s life as symbolic of

the horrors white society had inflicted on African

Americans, noting: “You can’t leave that film and

not be aware of what has been done to him”.

Clarke’s characters may be the products of an

unjust society that conspires to subject them, but

they are rarely portrayed as pathetic victims or

morally punished for their transgressions. Her

concerted exploration of oppression – as it emerges

from the intersections of class, race, sexuality and

gender – feels more relevant than ever.

The retrospective ‘American Independent:

A Focus on Shirley Clarke’ screens at BFI

Southbank, London, until the end of November

Harlem shuffle: Clarke’s portrait of New York street gangs The Cool World (1963)

AT A GLANCE

SHIRLEY CLARKE

American experimental filmmaker

Born 1919 in New York City to a Polish

father and a Jewish mother.

Clarke was a key figure in the independent

filmmakers’ movement in Greenwich Village

in the 1950s and 60s, along with Jonas

Mekas, Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage.

Key films

The Connection (1961)

The Cool World (1963)

Portrait of Jason (1967)

Died 1997 in Boston, Massachusetts.

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VERSION Wide Angle, 2