The movie tells the story of a black man who meets a white woman while riding the subway in New York City.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Though remaining extremely faithful to Jones' original text, director Anthony Harvey has enriched the mythical dimension of the charged encounter between predatory, white female and retiring, black male by having his train stop more than once at the same station.

The implication of an inescapable and infinitely recurring ritual – implicit in the play's circular structure – is thus strengthened by the surrealistic nature of Lula's unending journey on a train "going some other way than mine".

And the deliberately austere camerawork suggests more compellingly than any theatrical performance could do the claustrophobic menace of the subway setting and the couple's obliviousness to their fellow passengers.

Shirley Knight is superb as the slatternly, almost schizophrenic, heroine, and Al Freeman, Jnr displays a fine control in the part of Clay.