Overrated and overhyped

Good concept, poorly executed.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I'm sure there are people who will like watching Paris Blues. Paul Newman fans, or Sidney Poitier fans, or those who like Paris or jazz music, but even though I'm 2 for 4, I found too many problems with the movie to enjoy it.First of all, even though Paul Newman made a career out of playing "the bad boy", he didn't really pull it off this time around. He and Sidney are nightlife jazz musicians. They are supposed to be seedy, bad quality, different-dame-a-night swingers. Then why did both of them look incredibly clean cut, with never a hair out of place? I just didn't buy it when they'd say, "Can you dig it?" It felt like they were in a movie parodying the 1960s and they didn't know what they were talking about.Second, Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll play girlfriends on a two-week Paris vacation. They're not even off the train when Paul hits on Diahann, completely ignoring Joanne, who incidentally looks prettier than she usually does. Joanne is taken with him, so they go the low-life dive nightclub where he works and listen to him play. Once again, Paul hits on Diahann and is incredibly rude to Joanne. He pushes her away repeatedly and tells her to find someone else for what she wants. But Joanne wants to be an incredibly stupid woman. Seriously, what's her problem? She just arrived in Paris! There are nightclubs and seedy musicians everywhere—what's so special about Paul Newman? He's downright mean to her constantly. She knows where he stands. But he's the one for her? Both romances are quite stupid. Diahann and Sidney are awkward at best; it's as if they used one take to say their lines in the worst, most comical way possible, and that's the take the director kept. Joanne and Paul are mismatched; sometimes star-crossed lovers are a good plot point, but in Paris Blues it's just badly written. Throughout the entire movie, she's incredibly stupid, but she comes up with spur-the-moment zingers that don't fit her character."I told you from the beginning, I'm not on the market," Paul says. With a look that's supposed to be smoldering, but just comes across as confused, Joanne says, "I wasn't shopping," before leaving the room. I wasn't amused.

Not just for Duke Ellington fans.Two American tourists (Carroll, Woodward) on a fortnight in Paris meet two competitive expat jazz musicians (Poitier, Newman). Will they get the boys to return stateside? Louis Armstrong ('Mad' Moore) steals the show.This is an, er, interesting movie. An early 60's period piece from before the Cuban missile crisis and the JFK assassination when the big issue for these young Americans was whether to settle down in suburbia or pursue the bohemian dream. With 56 years' hindsight, we see Black people and French people being patronized royally by prosperous white America, but this was 1961, and they meant well. They had just won WWII.Paul Newman is Ram Bowen, a star trombone player whose prowess with the slide has a hypnotic effect on the groovy types who spend all night in Parisian jazz cafés. Apparently star trombonists existed, but I did spend a while trying to work out what 'Ram' was short for. Ramon, perhaps. Rambunctious? Paul chews the scenery manfully, thankfully a little more restrained than in 'The Hustler', and some of his scenes with (wife) Joanne Woodward are actually quite affecting. Sydney P and Diahann C's scenes are lumbered with lines straight out of the liberal conscience handbook.I don't like the (to me, dated) Billy Strayhorn/Ellington sound at all, and it's a big component of Paris Blues: jazz music with pretensions to 'importance', whatever that is. I guess serious jazz like this symbolized the social advancement of people of colour, since they couldn't get a look in at classical music at the time. Tell it to Louis Armstrong.Nice photography, great locations, sets and supporting cast, and a satisfyingly downbeat ending. Way better than Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris, if you like a bit of jazz and Paris.

Martin Ritt made interesting dramas during his long, respected career, about spies, union workers, teachers, black-listed writers, half-breeds, farmers, boxers, landowners, and miners, but he was not very lucky with female tourists and musicians in Paris, as witness this production, one of two films he made in Europe in the early 1960s: this "Paris Blues" released in 1961, and the year before, "Five Branded Women", about Yugoslavian women being accused of having sex with Nazis during II World War. "Paris Blues" seems a bit interesting from the outset, a reflection on cultural clash, as seen through the eyes of four American characters in Paris, but it slowly becomes a variant of 1960's beach-opera "Where the Boys Are"... for adults. Paul Newman (obnoxiously demonstrating the limitations of Method acting) and Sidney Poitier (doing his usual number of the chic African-American) unconvincingly play two jazz musicians in Paris who have a two-week adventure with "high-heeled-on-cobblestone" tourists Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll. Joanne turns into a mix of Connie Francis and Yvette Mimieux, as the light-hearted, fun but serious at the core gal, with a past (including two children); while Diahann mixes Dolores Hart's activist role with Paula Prentiss' "baby-machine" goal. They have no restraint about sex with the guys as the four girls on the beach film, but they spend most of the film trying so hard to get Paul and Sidney "back home", to domesticity and the "American way of life", that they become increasingly boring characters. On the French side, Barbara Laage plays Marie, Paul's silent, older lover and owner of the café where his band plays (and she sings a tune), while Serge Reggiani enacts a cliché of a cocaine-addict gypsy for good measure. The only time I felt the film came alive is when Louis Armstrong goes to Marie's Café with his musicians, and they all play with Paul, Sidney, Serge, Moustache and the rest of the guys. But the joy comes from Duke Ellington's pre-recorded music, for all the horn players seem to be sipping Coke bottles instead of blowing saxes, trumpets or trombones. Ritt was an efficient filmmaker, but this one is nothing more than a flat dramatic comedy, without style, and with a very bad script by four writers (including black-listed Walter Bernstein), based on a novel by Harold Flender.

What a great movie. Joanne Woodward is at her very best. She is the star, the player that makes this movie happen, the actress whose performance raises this movie from merely good to great. Far from being corny, this movie offers a powerful, coherent and plausible story about people who meet, form intense attachments and then must make decisions that will effect their relationships and their lives. The movie has a tremendous all-star cast, with Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll and Louis Armstrong, in addition to Ms. Woodward, and a great setting, Paris circa early 1960s, minus the tourists. This movie grabs and keeps one's interest as the characters meet, interact, and reveal their innermost thoughts, and does do in a straightforward manner that is neither corny nor trite. This movie is wonderful.