Remember last week we said you should watch the movie Paris Blues? We took our own advice. Above is a nice Rolf Goetze poster promoting the film’s run in West Germany, which began today in 1961. The movie features a couple of jazz horn players portrayed by Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier who are having a grand time in Paris playing the clubs and escaping the political unrest in the U.S. Both meet American women, and both fall in love. Poitier’s girlfriend Diahann Carroll is deeply concerned with civil rights and goes about convincing Poitier that he’s running away from his responsibility to make America better. Pretty soon he feels heavily pressured to go back, even though it means giving up his wonderful life for hatred and turmoil.
Okay. Forgive us. Here’s the thing. As foreigners abroad we think this is utter horseshit. We feel no particular allegiance to our birth country, and it’s only fair, because the people who really matter feel no allegiance to it either. If they did, then how could captains of industry ship millions of jobs overseas, people who have enough money to live fifty lifetimes constantly dodge taxes, and corporations suck public money out of the federal government until it can’t pay for schools and roads? They obviously don’t care, so why should we? And why should Sidney Poitier’s character care? We don’t think an actual man in his situation—especially an African American man who’s escaped rampant racism—would let anyone make this an issue for him, not even Diahann Carroll, who’s sweet looking, yes, but certainly nothing unique in Paris.
But it’s in the script, so Carroll’s constant harping on this provokes an inner crisis and Poitier frets and wonders if it’s right to live an idyllic life playing jazz music in Paris while his brethren are suffering. Will he go back? Only a viewing of the film will reveal the answer. We’ll encourage you to watch it by adding that on the way to his big decision you’ll get cool Parisian scenery, lots of scenes in nightclubs, a jazz cameo or two, and an equally complex love story between real-life spouses Newman and Joanne Woodward. While Poitier and Newman aren’t actual jazz musicians, their pantomimic musical sequences mostly work, and the movie is fun, exotic, and insouciant most of the way through. Just try not to fall for the Hollywood social engineering that suggests any life outside the U.S. is one filled with the blues.
