La ballade des sans-espoirs

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?

"Too Late Blues" is Cassavettes' most self referential film and it is a gem. And now that we know that Gena Rowlands continually tried to manipulate editing and versions of Faces, Husbands and especially Shadows editing to make them more commercial (see Ray Carney's exploration of that issue) it is almost spooky to see her simile in Too Late

John Cassavetes produced and directed "Too Late Blues", as well as co-writing it, in 1961. It was his second film, after "Shadows", but he never really rated it, feeling the studio imposed restrictions on his 'style' and that the end result was too conventional. It wasn't. It may not be quite in the same class as "A Woman Under the Influence" or "Opening Night" but it is still remarkable in its free-wheeling, semi-improvisational way.

It's about jazz musicians and in particular Bobby Darin's pianist and Stella Steven's singer and their on-again, off-again romance. They are both terrific, particularly Stevens, (I think it's one of the great overlooked performances by an actress in the movies), and there is an equally brilliant performance by Everett Chambers as Darin's Machiavellian agent. Indeed the entire supporting cast are outstanding confirming, even at this early stage, that Cassavetes was a great director of actors. The superb black and white photography is by Lionel Lindon and naturally there is some great jazz on the soundtrack.

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.

Coming after "shadows" and preceding "a child is waiting" ,"too late blues" is some kind of arithmetic mean between them.Not overtly avant-garde ,but never really mainstream,unlike the 1959 movie ,it has a screenplay and most of the dialogues are not improvised:actually they sometimes seem "carefully" written.

Stella Stevens gives a wistful sad performance ,diametrically opposite to later parts such as those of "girls girls girls" (!)or 'the silencers".Her singing -or that of the singer who dubs her?- looks like a moaning which stunningly blends with the boys' music.

"Too late blues" keeps a rather loose plot,but "a child is waiting "would take its "conventional " side and tighten it up:as a result ,Cassavetes would disown "a child..." and go back to less accessible works such as his debut.