marcslope Review of St. Louis Blues

St. Louis Blues (1958)

Musically excellent, dramatically not so much

[6/10 · 25 August 2021]

Biopic of W. C. Handy, only it can hardly be called that, not with the inaccuracies and one-dimensional conflicts and playing around with time it commits. The continuity is truly bonkers: Handy was born in 1873 and died in 1958, just when the movie was coming out. The picture opens in Memphis in about 1900 and Handy's a nine-year-old or so, secretly practicing on his trumpet despite his preacher father's insistence that if it isn't church music, it's the devil's music. That's the central conflict, and as Handy grows up into Nat King Cole, it feels increasingly trite and tiresome. The continuity's all over the place: Handy hooks up with a sultry saloon singer (Eartha Kitt), in what should be about 1910 but is dotted with 1920s and 1930s automobiles, and later ducks into a cafe where Ella Fitzgerald is singing, in what would be about 1929, when Ella wasn't even a teenager. Eventually the conflict is resolved when Handy, his dad, his Aunt Hagar (a game Pearl Bailey), and his longtime girlfriend (a quite wonderful Ruby Dee) witness Eartha's rendition of the title tune at Aeolian Hall, in a whitewashed Nelson Riddle orchestral arrangement that has nothing to do with St. Louis or the blues. The screenplay makes very little sense, but there are some grand musical moments along the way, including a rafter-raising Mahalia Jackson, and anything Nat King Cole plays or sings. Eartha's sultry and watchable, too, though, again, utterly out of period.