The extent to which we can believe in the actuality of events, and not merely in their verisimilitude, is certainly the test of The Connection. If it doesn't impress us as an honestly played-out psycho-drama in which crucial revelations are at stake, it becomes an ingenious hoax to which our sympathies attach only at a level of execution and performance…. Because the cinema is now passing through its Pirandello phase, The Connection is being cited as an example of what movies can do to baffle our perceptions creatively. It is not a good one.

The Connection, unfortunately, doesn't fool you as a living record. In fact, for the first few minutes you think it isn't going to work at all. By mid-film, however, it has succeeded in posing a visual paradox that anyone who understands how movies are made can appreciate; and of course the more you understand...