Film Festival: Summertime Blues St. Louis Blues is the 1958 Hollywood version of W. C. Handy’s life, formulated as a vehicle for his music as opposed to an accurate biographical portrayal. However, St. Louis Blues is well worth it because of the music and the fine performances.Although his exact place in the pantheon of blues greats…
summertime
Lisa’s Home Bijou: “The Seven Year Itch”
Film Festival: Summertime Blues When summer comes to New York City, it gets hot. Really hot. Back in the 1950s, Manhattan husbands used to pack their wives and children off to the seashore or to the mountains, creating a town full of “summer bachelors.” It’s within this atmosphere that Billy Wilder sets a delightful story…
Lisa’s Home Bijou: “The Rose Tattoo”
Film Festival: Summertime Blues Tennessee Williams is one of the premier voices of the South, so a “set” of films about the South wouldn’t be complete without him. In “The Rose Tattoo,” (1955) we visit another Southern locale on the Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Biloxi, Mississippi. “The Rose Tattoo” is an unusual story…
Lisa’s Home Bijou: “The Long, Hot Summer”
Film Festival: Summertime Blues Time to join William Faulkner on the veranda with a washtub full of cold beers icing down in the corner, on a long, hot summer’s day. “Hey. I never move and work in the same day.”—Ben When I think of summer in the South, I inevitably think of William Faulkner and…
Lisa’s Home Bijou: “Birth of the Blues”
Film Festival: Summertime Blues ONE OF THE HOMES OF JAZZ AND THE BLUES is Basin Street in New Orleans, the setting for this 1941 musical starring Bing Crosby and Mary Martin. Let’s get one thing straight to begin with: Bing Crosby did not invent the blues. With apologies to real New Orleans bluesmen like Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden, and Jelly Roll…