“Clarke damned the director in The Connection for his moral arrogance and manipulation, undergirded by the pride of subversion (“I’ve told you,” he sputters, “I’m not interested in making a Hollywood picture!”) Portrait of Jason is avant-garde in that Clarke offers no proxy for the exploitative filmmaker, but the enduring question, given the mistakes of the The Cool World and her later concerns about “dishonesty,” is whether Clarke was intentionally damning herself.”