Shirley Clarke - Reception

Reception

The only full-length feature to receive wide media coverage in Clarke's lifetime was The Connection. Her other films were subject to bans by New York State censors, or distribution challenges posed by the lack of infrastructure for independent filmmakers. Nonetheless, The Connection generated controversy and discussion in the downtown New York City arts community. The original play by Jack Gelber had been condemned by various mainstream critics when it was being performed off-Broadway, but had still drawn an audience that included "Leonard Bernstein, Anita Loos, Salvador Dalí and Lillian Hellman, who likened it to “a fine time at the circus” ".

Clarke was determined to film the play, and once completed, it received favourable reviews. It was screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961, where again it received favourable reviews. American Beat movement celebrities who were in Europe at the time travelled to Cannes to show support for Clarke's film. The Connection was subsequently shut down and banned in New York State following complaints of indecency, based on a shot that included a pornographic magazine and a word deemed obscene. At the time, New York State only permitted films to be publicly screened if they received a license from the State's board of censors. Another attempt was made to publicly screen the film a year later, only for it to be shut down again by the police, as the filmmakers still did not have a licence from the State's board of censors. Following these incidents, critical reviews of The Connection became predominantly negative. The negative reviews and scandal made it difficult for Clarke to organize funding and distribution for her next film projects.

Clarke won an Academy Award in 1962 for Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel With the World, and was co-nominee for Skyscraper (1960). Clarke made Skyscraper with two other documentary filmmakers. In 1964, The Cool World became the first independently-made film to be screened at the Venice International Film Festival.

Portrait of Jason (1967) had a mixed reception, doing better with critics in Europe, where cinema verité experiments were more widely accepted. Portrait of Jason received wide press coverage in the United States, but "except for the smaller, esoteric publications", reviewers were generally negative. Criticism tended to focus on Clarke's supposed "morbid viewpoint and the lack of production polish".

Clarke's reputation languished for many years, during a period when she was "marginalized, written out of histories and dismissed as a dilettante". There has been renewed interest in her filmmaking in the past several years, however. As of 2012 her films are being screened at the IFC Center in New York City, and are being released as a series of DVDs. Her features have recently been described as "films considered essential works of New American Cinema".