OVP: Paris Blues (1961)

Film: Paris Blues (1961)
Stars: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, Louis Armstrong
Director: Martin Ritt
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This week for our review theme we're focusing on movies that were Oscar-nominated for their music in some capacity.  Today we're venturing into the early 1960's, with Martin Ritt doing one of his less memorable outings with Paul Newman.  The film, despite the blockbuster cast (look at that call sheet!) is not really remembered for anything at all today, and in 1961 the film itself wasn't really noteworthy for anything either.  It wasn't the mammoth hit that The Hustler was for Newman that same year, and so if it's noted for anything today, it's for its nominated score, which of course we'll get to, but first let's talk about a pretty drab movie that common sense would dictate would be more famous than it is simply because of its four leads.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about two Americans living in Paris named Ram (Newman) and Eddie (Poitier).  They are musicians who work at a Paris hotspot, and Ram meets Connie (Carroll), whom he is initially quite infatuated with, but she's not having it; however, her friend Lillian (Woodward) is smitten and insists that they go to the club.  Quickly the couples pair off-Ram & Lillian in their own storyline, Eddie & Connie in theirs.  Lillian & Ram are focused on commitment-she wants to settle down, but he struggles with this & wants to continue seeing if he can be a truly great musician, while Eddie refuses to go back to America with Connie because he doesn't see the opportunities there for a black man that he can receive in France in the 1960's.  The film continues with one of the jazz musicians (Eddie) giving up his life here to pursue love with the woman he's met, while the other (Ram) admitting that he isn't ready to give up on his dream to go after Lillian, and deciding to stay in Paris.

There's so much about Paris Blues that should work.  The acting is great (I will admit right now that I don't love Joanne Woodward in most things, this included, but the other three leads are strong), and the cinematography is superb.  You get to see Paris as if it's almost in frozen photographs, it's so crisp and period-specific.  But the script doesn't have any urgency, and it shies away from the most obvious thing to a modern audience-Paul Newman's Ram should definitely be dating Diahann Carroll's Connie, not the stoic Lillian.

You almost get that-there's an opening scene where Ram is trying to pick a surprised Connie up, essentially dismissing the idea of her white roommate in favor of him dating her.  This is, quite honestly, a better movie.  Forgetting that Woodward & Newman have minimal chemistry in this film (like I said-Woodward doesn't seem to get her character here and underplays her), it would have made for a more interesting tale if it was Carroll's uptight Connie with Newman's rascally Ram, and then have Poitier's stoic Eddie having complicated conversations about racism with Woodward's Lillian.  This is, according to interviews Poitier would do later, what the filmmakers initially wanted to try with the movie, but the censors wouldn't have it.  As a result, you get a pretty lazy read on an interesting quartet of figures, despite the actors largely doing their part to keep us intrigued.

The film's score isn't classic jazz in the sense that it feels fresh for the era, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its moments or have a legendary source.  It just sort of gets lost in the picture, and doesn't feel as innovative as you'd expect both considering the context of the film and in particular the composer.  Paris Blues stands apart as the only Oscar nomination that Duke Ellington would ever win (the film would lose to West Side Story).  Like so much of Paris Blues, the songs in the film are competent but disappoint, clearly having the makings of some better sound that might have come to light in a better movie.