Claudia T
One of my favorite movies I've watched maybe twenty times since I was young. I saw someone describe it as plotless. I mean if you want to watch a really blatant thriller then there are plenty crap high plot films on netlfix now, but this is subtly full of meaning and existential dread, creativity, bigotry, love, desire, music. Oh the music. Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, it's absolutely brilliant, and the cast is brilliant including one of the few films with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward together, the love of a lifetime. The ending isn't Hollywood perfect room though, it's real and it's deeply touching. Watch it.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
08/23/23
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Steve D
the music parts just aren't interesting.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
07/17/23
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Audience Member
This film sets an incredible mood. The jazz filled clubs and Paris back drop makes for one cool movie. Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier are jazz musicians working the clubs in Paris. They meet to American girls on vacation, played by Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll. Even Louis Armstrong is around for good measure. The four people pair off and begin to build relationships. The film is good drama, but I feel it stops just short of being an exceptional work. The performances are top notch, as you might expect. There is a great scene where everyone jams out. There's a moment close to the end of the film where one of the characters shows reveals ho bad his addiction to drugs is. It's a great moment, that could have elevated the film more if thee plot had expanded this theme.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/09/23
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Audience Member
Gave up after 40 minutes. I have a lot of time for the leads, and for Louis and Ellington for that matter. But there seemed to be no plot whatsoever and nothing to sustain interest in terms of character. I've read other reviews stating that the shots of Paris were lovely, yet a lot of the street scenes I saw were clearly filmed in a studio with unconvincing painted backdrops. Considering the pedigree of the acting talent, the heady sense of place Ritt was able to evoke in both Edge of the City and The Long, Hot Summer, and the fact that À bout de soufflé came out a year earlier, this should have been so much better.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/23/23
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Audience Member
Trumpeter Ram Bowen (Paul Newman) and saxophonist Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier) blaring jazz in the City of Lights to a grooving crowd is the only way to open Paris Blues. Martin Ritt sets us up for a good time in Bohemia with icons of cool, but knocks us flat with the reality behind the party, drifting over a yawning city as the sun rises, and back into a club vacant except for the two musicians arguing over a new composition. Before Cook calls it a night (or morning), Bowen is left knowing the music is good, but asking is it great?
This question is at the heart of Martin Ritt's film, life in Paris is good, but is it great? For the musicians, the answer is unequivocally yes until the arrival of Lillian Corning (Joanne Woodward) and Connie Lampson (Diahann Carroll), two American tourists on a brief trip to the city who's affections after a night at the jazz club forces the expat musicians to re-evaluate their lives in the city of lights.
For Eddie Cook, a young black musician from pre-civil rights USA, Paris is a haven where race is no longer a conscious thought or his defining quality. As he explains to Connie during a walk by the Seine river ‘Look. Here, nobody says, "Eddie Cook, negro musician." They say, "Eddie Cook, musician," period. And that's all I want to be.' It's a fantasy to believe any place at any time is a paradise of racial equality, but in this suspension of disbelief is the space for Connie and Cook to wrestle over heated questions as romance blossoms.
For Connie, there is no solution in hiding from the problem, racial inequality should be fought and changed so that home can finally be what the word means to millions that do not suffer prejudice. While Cook has a simpler point of view, ‘You stick around Paris for a while and stretch a bit. Sit down for lunch somewhere without getting clubbed for it and you'll wake up one day, look across the ocean and you'll say, "Who needs it?". As the two fall in love, the tug of war to which direction they will go, France or America becomes harder and harder. Cook and Connie's story is a fresh and important sound, especially in 1961, and easily drowns out the worn old will-they-won't-they tune of Ram and Lillian.
Newman is one of the defining images of cool and every line he has here plays to it. ‘Honey, I live music' says Ram after sleeping with Lillian, reminding her that there isn't an inch of space in his life for anything that isn't composing his masterpieces or playing his horn. But Newman's stoicism and quiet cool doesn't reflect the wild improvisations of a musician, especially one who can, in the film's best scene, hold his own in a musical battle with Louis Armstrong himself. Ram should be a fireball exploding at rejection, and constantly bopping along to the rhythm in his head, rather than the chilled, laid back guy that emanates a contented married man (that Newman actually was to Woodward at the time).
The issue is Martin Ritt came in too early. Had the film played in the late 1960s after The Heat of The Night, Paris Blues wouldn't have been a duet, but a solo. Poitier's character could easily absorb the entire narrative for himself as a hot tempered, passionate jazz musician venting his pains of racial inequality through his music, eventually reluctantly facing a painful past through the strength of new found love in Connie. But this is 1961, and instead, the story is divided in two, giving Ram's parasitic story enough to survive while keeping Poitier's from thriving.
It is painful to see a film on the precipice of so much, Ritt is as adept at the stark dramatic direction as the infectious highs of the musical numbers, the script is witty and frank discussing burning topics, Newman is absorbing in his choices even if they don't quite fit, while Poitier and Carroll are virtuoso. Paris Blues ultimately answers its own question, it is good, but it could have been great.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The streets, the music and the charm of Newman. It's all magic even though the race question was tackled in a very weak way. It was a different era and even so the film maintains it's glow and beauty.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/20/23
Full Review
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