Paris Blues

Two American jazz musicians, Ram and Eddie, are working in a club in Paris. They meet two American women on holiday. Two relationships form and both run into the same question: go back to America, or stay? The subject is not love but why they are there. Eddie, a Black musician, says that in Paris he does not have to interrogate how people treat him; going home is not a choice for him but a step backwards. Ram is there to be taken seriously as a musician. The form is built on jazz; the club sequences are left long and the music sits in front of the narration rather than behind it. Duke Ellington wrote the score, which brought him an Oscar nomination. Louis Armstrong appears as himself and plays through a long passage. Martin Ritt directs. The most argued-over thing about the production is a change. In the source novel the two couples were paired across racial lines; the studio altered it and matched the couples within their own races. Ritt later called that decision the film's greatest failing. Paul Newman plays Ram, Sidney Poitier plays Eddie, and Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll play the two women. Who it is for: viewers who like jazz and films built on sixties Paris. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a sharp argument about race; the film raises it and, because of the studio's decision, leaves it half finished.