There's much in Anatole Litvak's Blues in the Night which suggests that Martin Scorsese borrowed heavily from it for New York, New York (though Scorsese cites The Man I Love as his chief inspiration). A melodrama set in the jazz world, it explores the volatile relationships and raffish milieu of a troupe of players trying to keep body and soul together without abandoning their musical ideals.
Five rough and ready amateurs form a band in St. Louis and start touring the south Memphis, New Orleans. Richard Whorf is their leader; trumpeter Jack Carson and canary Priscilla Lane (whose character's name is `Character') are man and wife; and among the rest is the young Elia Kazan. On the road complications ensue: Lane, pregnant, thinks the free-and-easy Carson will take a powder if he knows a kid's coming; riding the rails, they hook up with a lammed-up mobster (Lloyd Nolan). Nolan offers them a gig at his roadhouse (The Jungle) in New Jersey, the spires of Manhattan just across the river. Around him, however, swarms a strange menage: Betty Field, his hard-as-nails ex-squeeze; Howard Da Silva, bartender and jack-of-all-trades; and the excellent Wallace Ford, as a has-been hanger-on. The grasping Field snares Whorf and pries him away from the band; when she tires of him, now piano man in a glitzy novelty band, she gives him the air. He hits the bottle, loses his talent, goes round the bend. But Field's not through with him yet, or, for that matter, with Nolan....
The film is full of surprises. Don Siegel did the clever montages, cutting his teeth, (as it were), and Robert Rossen's script stays fresh and slangy: just when you spot another cliche coming round the mountain, he sneaks in a low-key, well-acted vignette. Litvak modulates the tone expertly, starting out light and insouciant and darkening his palette as the story advances, with heavy foreshadowings of film noir. It's a significant milestone in the formation of the noir cycle, and why it isn't better known remains one of cinema's mysteries: Blues in the Night is an involving, inventive musical drama.
Five rough and ready amateurs form a band in St. Louis and start touring the south Memphis, New Orleans. Richard Whorf is their leader; trumpeter Jack Carson and canary Priscilla Lane (whose character's name is `Character') are man and wife; and among the rest is the young Elia Kazan. On the road complications ensue: Lane, pregnant, thinks the free-and-easy Carson will take a powder if he knows a kid's coming; riding the rails, they hook up with a lammed-up mobster (Lloyd Nolan). Nolan offers them a gig at his roadhouse (The Jungle) in New Jersey, the spires of Manhattan just across the river. Around him, however, swarms a strange menage: Betty Field, his hard-as-nails ex-squeeze; Howard Da Silva, bartender and jack-of-all-trades; and the excellent Wallace Ford, as a has-been hanger-on. The grasping Field snares Whorf and pries him away from the band; when she tires of him, now piano man in a glitzy novelty band, she gives him the air. He hits the bottle, loses his talent, goes round the bend. But Field's not through with him yet, or, for that matter, with Nolan....
The film is full of surprises. Don Siegel did the clever montages, cutting his teeth, (as it were), and Robert Rossen's script stays fresh and slangy: just when you spot another cliche coming round the mountain, he sneaks in a low-key, well-acted vignette. Litvak modulates the tone expertly, starting out light and insouciant and darkening his palette as the story advances, with heavy foreshadowings of film noir. It's a significant milestone in the formation of the noir cycle, and why it isn't better known remains one of cinema's mysteries: Blues in the Night is an involving, inventive musical drama.