AllMovie

Without a doubt one of the lesser films produced by the long-term collaboration of Martin Ritt and Paul Newman, it nevertheless boasts a probing performance by Joanne Woodward and a wonderful score by Duke Ellington. The long-standing romance between Paris and African-American jazz musicians dates from the 1920s. The French accepted the music as an art long before it was recognized as such in the United States, and it continues to accord jazz players a stature still rare in their country of origin. Thus, many musicians chose to relocate there, creating a unique musical subculture. One imagines that it was this world, which had never been put on film, that Ritt hoped to explore, but the imperatives of Hollywood presumably required a white star in the lead. Instead of a film about jazz, he's created a tepid drama about a white musician's aspirations to be a composer, suffused with middlebrow notions about art. In the other corner, Poitier has the even more thankless role of mouthpiece for the script's anti-racist rhetoric, as though this is the only subject black musicians ever discuss. But amidst the dross, Joanne Woodward burns through the script's glibness as a normal woman hoping for a commitment from the conflicted Newman. The source music played by Louis Armstrong, Wild Man Moore, and Paul Gonsalves; Ellington's rousing score; and the backdrop of the City of Lights are also among the film's pleasures.