Shirley Clarke
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Portrait of Jason | |
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![]() 1967 newspaper advertisement promoting screenings of the film at New York theaters | |
Directed by | Shirley Clarke |
Produced by | Shirley Clarke |
Starring | Jason Holliday Shirley Clarke Carl Lee |
Cinematography | Jeri Sopanen |
Edited by | Shirley Clarke |
Distributed by | Film-Makers' Distribution Center Milestone Films (re-release) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 105 minutes |
Language | English |
Portrait of Jason is a 1967 documentary film directed, produced and edited by Shirley Clarke and starring Jason Holliday (né Aaron Payne, 1924–1998).
In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [1]
A gay African-American hustler and aspiring cabaret performer, Jason is the sole on-screen presence in the film. He narrates his troubled life story to the camera, behind which Clarke and her partner at the time, actor Carl Lee, provoke and berate Jason with increasing hostility as the film progresses. The film employs avant-garde and cinéma vérité techniques to expose the tragedy underlying Jason's theatrical, exaggerated persona. [2] [3]
Filming for Portrait of Jason took place in the living room of Clarke's Hotel Chelsea penthouse apartment. The shoot started at 9:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 3, 1966, and ended 12 hours later. [4] While Clarke originally intended for Jason to be the only speaking character in the film, she included the off-screen voices of her, Carl Lee, and other crew members in the final cut. She later revealed why she did this:
When I saw the rushes I knew the real story of what happened that night in my living room had to include all of us, and so our question-reaction probes, our irritations and angers, as well as our laughter remain part of the film, essential to the reality of one winter's night in 1967. [4]
The inclusion of the off-camera voices is most important in the final reel, when Carl Lee and others begin to verbally attack Jason for wrongs he has done them or their perception of his bad character. The assaults make Jason become defensive and weepy for the first time in the film. However, by the very end of the film, he brushes off the continuing attacks by trying to make jokes of them, although, in stark contrast to the film before the final reel, he himself does not laugh. His final words are, "Finally. Oh, that was beautiful. I'm happy about the whole thing." His face is once again a completely out-of-focus abstraction, so the lack of visual information makes it difficult to know whether these words are meant to be sarcastic.
Upon its 1967 release, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times admired Portrait of Jason as a "curious and fascinating example of cinéma vérité, all the ramifications of which cannot be immediately known." [3] Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman called Portrait of Jason "the most extraordinary film I've seen in my life." [5]
In 2013, Dennis Doros, co-founder of Milestone Films and board member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, gave a series of talks to universities and film societies about the search for the film, which was thought lost. However, the original print of the film had surfaced in the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research archives. [6]
An intensive restoration effort of the original print received over $26,000 from a Kickstarter campaign as well as funding from Academy Film Archive. [7] Among other funders were Steve Buscemi, the Winterfilm Collective, and TIFF Cinematheque. [8]
Josef Lindner and Michael Pogorzelski supervised the restoration, which involved the cooperation of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, the Swedish Film Institute, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Harry Ransom Center, the Berlinale International Forum of New Cinema, and Wendy Clarke. The mastering of the restoration was completed by Modern Videofilm.
In April 2013, Milestone Films released the restored print. [9]
As of February 16, 2023, Portrait of Jason holds a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Like any great work of art, Portrait of Jason tells a story that reaches far beyond its canvas in the act of illuminating its subject." [10] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [11]
The Village Voice's Melissa Anderson wrote that Portrait of Jason "says more about race, class, and sexuality than just about any movie before or since." [12]
Documentary filmmaker Connie Field assessed the film quite negatively:
I felt [Clarke] was exploiting him ... not because ... of trying to reveal a person at all. ... if you basically make someone drunk in front of your camera, that's exploitative. ... Who cares if the reality is that this person does drink a lot? You're the one supplying the liquor. ... at the end, when he is crying, I see a drunk crying, and I think only 'a drunk crying' rather than 'his soul is being revealed'. [13]
In 2015, Stephen Winter directed a film called Jason and Shirley , starting Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters, which is a fictionalized and critical re-imagination of the daylong filming of Portrait of Jason in December 1966. [14] [15]
David Holzman's Diary is a 1967 American mockumentary, or work of metacinema, directed by James McBride and starring L. M. Kit Carson. A feature-length film made on a tiny budget over several days, it is a work of experimental fiction presented as an autobiographical documentary. "A self-portrait by a fictional character in a real place—New York's Upper West Side," the film comments on the title character's personality and life as well as on documentary filmmaking and the medium of cinema more generally. In 1991, David Holzman's Diary was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and recommended for preservation.
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.
Joseph Ezekiel Strick was an American director, producer and screenwriter.
Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews were criticized as unnecessarily harsh. Crowther was an advocate of foreign-language films in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly those of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini.
Kevin Brownlow is a British film historian, television documentary-maker, filmmaker, author, and film editor. He is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era, having become interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent documenting and restoring film. Brownlow has rescued many silent films and their history. His initiative in interviewing many largely forgotten, elderly film pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s preserved a legacy of early mass-entertainment cinema. He received an Academy Honorary Award at the 2nd Annual Governors Awards given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on 13 November 2010. This was the first occasion on which an Academy Honorary Award was given to a film preservationist.
Shirley Clarke was an American filmmaker.
The Eleanor Roosevelt Story is a 1965 American biographical documentary film directed by Richard Kaplan.
On the Bowery is a 1956 American docufiction film directed by Lionel Rogosin. The film, Rogosin's first feature was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.
Weddings and Babies is a 1960 film directed, produced, and written by independent filmmaker Morris Engel. It stars Viveca Lindfors, John Myhers, Chiarina Barile, and Leonard Elliott.
Milestone Film and Video is an independent film distribution company, founded in 1990 in the United States by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller. The company researches and distributes cinematographic material from around the world, including silent film, post-war foreign film renaissance, contemporary American independent features, documentaries and foreign films.
Carl Lee was an American actor. His father was actor/professional boxer Canada Lee.
Hot Spell is a 1958 American drama film directed by Daniel Mann, starring Shirley Booth and Anthony Quinn, and released by Paramount Pictures.
Shine On, Harvest Moon is a 1944 musical–biographical film about the vaudeville team of Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, who wrote the popular song "Shine On, Harvest Moon." The film was directed by David Butler and stars Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan Sheridan's singing voice was dubbed by Lynn Martin.
Young People is a 1940 American musical drama film directed by Allan Dwan and starring Shirley Temple and Jack Oakie. This would be Shirley's final film as a child actress.
Ornette: Made in America is a 1985 American documentary film directed and edited by Shirley Clarke that studies saxophonist and free jazz innovator Ornette Coleman.
Jason and Shirley is a 2015 drama comedy fantasy film directed by Stephen Winter. The film is a historical re-imagining that revisits the making of Shirley Clarke's 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason.
Jason Holliday was an American hustler and nightclub performer. He is the star of Shirley Clarke's 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason.
My Hustler is a 1965 American drama film by Andy Warhol and Chuck Wein. Set on Fire Island, My Hustler depicts competition over the affections of a young male hustler among a straight woman, a former male hustler, and the man who hired the boy’s companionship via a “Dial-A-Hustler” service.
Skyscraper is a 1959 documentary film by Shirley Clarke about the construction of the 666 Fifth Avenue skyscraper.
John M. Crowther was an American artist and writer known for the cartoons he produced for Mad magazine, oil portraits, and his writing for television and film.