Too Late Blues

This is a very good jazz film, bringing the whole era to life, thanks to some superb acting by Bobby Darin (thank you thank you Montgomery Clift for backing out at the last minute) and the stunning Stella Stevens (why was she not a major star?). It certainly is not "the best jazz film ever" as some critics have said - "Round Midnight" and "Bird" are infinitely better films. But it's a quirky one, nonetheless. Darin plays jazz pianist and bandleader Ghost Wakefield (was that not also a make of aeroplane?), who is highly idealistic and loves a mellow, instrumental type of jazz. He falls for floozy Jess Polanski (Stevens) and ends up having to decide whether to continue to play on bandstands to empty parks (save for the birds), and old people's homes and orphanages, or compromise his type of jazz and play instead a more commercial type blues. He clearly makes the wrong decision. The hardest thing about this film for me was that I actually prefer the blues-type jazz he was shunning, as will probably most of the audience of this film, but that is irrelevant to our enjoyment of this film: "Too Late Blues" is a film about a stubborn man who is always "too late", because of his abject stubbornness. But there's more to his character than that: he cuts a rather pathetic and therefore lifelike character throughout, but ultimately his stubbornness is so infuriating that we cannot help but sympathise with the other bandmembers, and Jess, more than with the hero (Ghost). Is this a failure in this film? Perhaps it is. Which is why I cannot agree that it is the best jazz film ever. It is certainly a good one, though; although there could certainly have been a little more music in it. And certainly more of Stella Stevens's singing - if indeed that is her voice ("Girls! Girls! Girls!" is normally credited with being the first film in which Stella Stevens sings, which was the following year....) "Too Late Blues" deserves a decent DVD release ASAP - perhaps with a Stella Stevens commentary. Hope you're reading this, Paramount!

John Cassavetes creates an eternally unique drama with his chronicle of an idealistic jazz musician played by crooner Bobby Darin, and his relationship among his fellow band members and his object of affection, a beautiful would-be singer who comes between him and his band members, played by Stella Stevens in an honest, humanly extreme performance clearly directed by Cassavetes and cementing an argument that she could have held her own as a star.

Darin, as Cassavetes surely intended, brings a realistic contribution to his character from his life in the world of the era's music scene, as a dogmatically philosophical band leader who takes tremendous pride in seeing a profound, transcendental beauty in a mellow, instrumental school of jazz that he, with the exasperated tolerance of his fellow players, finds ideal to play to empty parks to communicate with nature and birds when he isn't playing gigs at old people's homes and orphanages. What is irrelevant in this film is how we feel about the music he feels most personally in tune with (no pun intended) in comparison to the commercially accessible music that would welcome him into a successful career. Like all Cassavetes films, Too Late Blues is about a character whose proclivities are beyond us, and what keeps it from being subjective or affected is that the rest of the characters share our feelings.

The key to our understanding and relating ardently to Darin's character is his unrelenting obstinacy, which becomes Bobby Darin uncannily, borne by the pride that absorbs all of his perceptions into what is of use only to him. As this dooming characteristic rears its head, an internal conflict between his true passions and what will gain him the recognition that deep down he wants more than anything else, we come to dislike him and find ourselves on the side of his band members and his girl Stevens.

Full of far-seeing insight and relentless individuality, it is not well-recognized film, which in itself is a testament to the artistic truth it presents. This is in some sense a shame though, because it is really a moving film in spite of all the expectations accompanied by an audience's perception of a music film. There are many great scenes where we simply hang out with the band in their regular hang-out spot with an entertaining bar owner, or we indulge in their impulsive diversions, or we react in unusual ways and we must step out of our regiments and make an endeavor out of looking further.

This may be the best movie ever made about jazz, at least by a mainstream Hollywood company. John Cassavetes had not yet dropped out of the L.A. scene to write and direct his own indie movies, and Too Late Blues represents one of his final attempts to try and do something different and ofbeat within the framework of The Big Time of movie-making. He pretty much pulls it off, with only one problem - because he and the film company refused to pull any punches, and offered a realistic rather than a romantic portrait of the jazz scene, what they ended up with was a pretty fine movie that was so totally depressing, no one wanted to go see it. Bobby Darin, just then trying to kick off a movie career a la his idol frank sinatra, plays the lead, "Ghost," a talented jazz musician with a fine band that just might make waves as they refuse to compromise for commercial success. Then Bobby meets a depressed but gorgeous young blonde (Stella Stevens, the most underrated actress of her generation) and shortly will do everything and anything he needs to do to win her. She's no simple femme fatale, though, and the full dimensionality of her character is essential to why the film clicks - in a notably downbeat way. As Bobby must choose between getting the girl or getting the gigs, he faces the great threat of every artist, jazz or otherwise. The mood and atmosphere is vivid, convincing, memorable in a noir kind of way. Catch this if you want quality - but not if you want some easy going escapism.

I suppose one might consider this 'minor' Cassavetes, given the fact that this is a very conventional story about jazz musicians and a woman who has been misused by men all her life. The production values also seem a little lower than some of his other films. But I can't help but feel astonished over how Cassavetes can make a meal out of just a few crumbs. Actually, he had more than a few crumbs. He had an excellent cast, headed by two extremely talented and wayward (!) actors. I'm in awe of how amazing Stella Stevens was, given the quality of the rest of her career. She certainly took a bad turn somewhere, but perhaps like her character in this film, no one ever took her seriously in the first place. A real shame! I saw Bobby Darin give an excellent performance in a film called PRESSURE POINT from around the same period as this film, so he has only confirmed my belief that he could have been a leading actor of his generation. But Cassavetes could probably even make me a good actress, so certainly he qualifies for a good deal of the credit here. This is just a small, human film with dignity and intelligence told with Cassavetes' usual panache for intensity. I can't remember how long it's been since I've cared about any screen characters so strongly. It was probably the last time I caught one of Cassavetes' other films!

A jazz musician with his group wants to be free to express himself and love his girl, not worry about settling down with a job. They play out in parks, goof around in bars and wait for their big break. Later when they go to the studio to record he says that he wants to play music he wants to and not what some producer thinks will make money, but in a fit of ego alienates everyone, yells his band away and wounds up alone as a sell-out auditioning for an upscale joint.

And this was Cassavetes himself at this point in his life. He had played a jazz piano playing detective on TV a few years prior. He had made Shadows in a close group of friends, playing music he wanted to. It had taken him three years to finish, two shoots and no prospects were forthcoming. He had even managed to alienate his group over money when the first meager profits came in. So he wound up lobbying hard for a low budget job in Hollywood which he got to make this.

Okay so we now know it as a mere footnote in the career of this man, but it's not bad at all; elicits strong performances, and has a voice that speaks about pressing needs, youth with no prospects. More interesting is how Cassavetes would expand in later years.

The difference with Shadows is not in what it has to say, nor in the type of life, nor how it portrays sex and relationships. We see unsure youth in both. This was scripted, but so was Shadows. No, it's that he has been taken in from outside and that intangible studio quality zaps the whole thing of breath. He wanted real locations in New york, got studio space on a stage. He wanted actual jazz for the band, had to settle for watered down Hollywood score jazz by whoever happened to be on the payroll.

Ironic. The film was made at all and Cassavetes hired to do it, because a producer wanted to see if he could cash in on the "art film" then taking flight, exemplified in Shadows, which no studio would deign to pick up. He knew close to nothing about making films of course, so if he is stifled, it's not in the way of Welles who had delicately conceived work botched after the fact. He simply doesn't have room to breathe shape in the discovery.

That's all fine. He would take flight in a few years, nothing went to waste.

A new expression was bubbling up around the country but fuddy daddies in control of industries still clung tenaciously to their outmoded ways. In music this is Aretha Franklin's Columbia records from the same period: powerful young voice stifled by cocktail arrangements. It would take the ugliest in a nation, rampant racism and war, for all these mores to be rolled back and dismantled, and that for a few brief years. Cassavetes would resurface during that time. What will it take now? Do we even have a New Thing?