Black History Month: Looking Back at "Paris Blues"

As February is Black History Month, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some films featuring African American actors and African American stories that have been overlooked, unsung, or also rans in the pantheon of favorite or important films about us.

Paris Blues (1961).
Directed by Martin Ritt
Starring Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodward, Diahann Carroll

A product of the post-civil rights sensibility, Paris Blues has to take place across the water to show us how we can really all get along.

The film is about two expatriate American jazz musicians, trombonist Ram Bowen (Paul Newman) who leads his own combo, and his saxophonist Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier), who live in sophisticated, freewheeling, bohemian Paris. The pair sketch out new compositions by day and hold court nightly as the main attraction in a fashionable jazz club into the wee hours. What are they performing? Music by Duke Ellington, naturally, though it is credited to the Ram Bowen group.

Ram initially meets two pretty American tourists, Lillian (Joanne Woodward) and Connie (Diahann Carroll), when he goes to meet the train bringing in noted jazz player Wild Man Miller (played by Louis Armstrong) who will sit in with Ram (as if the great Armstrong could play second fiddle to anyone on a bandstand). After a flirtation with Connie, who introduces him to Lillian, Ram invites the ladies to show up at his gig, which they do.

After some initial bad behavior and crossed signals, romance ensues along "race-appropriate" lines. Lillian makes a calculated play for Ram, impressed by his commitment to his music. Eddie finds himself drawn to Connie. As feelings deepen, the two couples must decide what happens when the ladies' two-week vacation is up. Do the women stay in Paris? Or will the mad lads return to America?

Newman and Woodward, already married in real life, portray the primary story in this black and white film, and Ram and Lillian's struggle is purely about the artistic freedom (not to mention a dalliance with a world-weary French chanteuse) that Paris affords Ram in his career as a composer and performer. While Lillian presses for a commitment, Ram isn't interested and initially breaks it off.

After confessing their love, Eddie and Connie talk marriage but can't agree on a future. Connie has a teaching gig to return to that's she fought too hard to get. She's also deeply connected to her roots, her family, and her home; regardless of the problems back in the U.S. of A., she is committed to being part of the solution. Eddie has been in Paris five years, finally feels free, and has no interest in a return. In a painful scene, Eddie tells Connie that he will never go back to America, where racism, segregation, abuse, and disrespect await a black man. "I don't beg for anything anymore! I'm not interested in The Cause," he says, "I'm only interested in us." "No, you're only interested in you," Connie responds.

Meanwhile, music is the great harmonizer. The Ellington soundtrack is swoon worthy, and a scene where Wild Man enters the subterranean jazz club with his entire band blowing their hearts out in a challenge is totally jazzalicious. Resplendent in its hand-clapping abandon, the music percolates with Satchmo displaying all the trumpet skills he's known for. Both Newman and Poitier studied with noted players to make their performances look authentic.

In addition to being a great travelogue of Paris by foot, Paris Blues is supposed to be about the travails of love, but the romances are too easily tied with a bow. The flick is about the cost of freedom. Unfortunately, the issue of freedom for African Americans is relative: Stay in America and Love it, defend it, and fight to change it, or leave its shores for a country where tolerance for racial differences seems to be higher. Even today, Paris is filled with numerous African American expats who came to shake off the shackles of America's deeply ingrained racism.