ShangLuda Admirable film.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Lechuguilla The final minute is what I would have expected from the entire film: dark, slow, some blues music, and moody. Regrettably, that last minute is an aberration in a script wherein the intended blues theme is overwhelmed by way too much dialogue. And the story lacks focus.A troupe of blues musicians never quite gets around to playing much blues music. Instead, lots of contrived situations keep the film plot bound, with assorted conflicts swirling around the various characters. Jigger Pine (Richard Whorf) is a piano player and the troupe leader, with lots of problems. But as soon as the angry, brittle Kay (Betty Field) appears, about a third of the way through the film, the story's emphasis seems to switch to her. Kay is nothing if not embittered, and she hisses her way through the remainder of the film, as she crosses paths with Jigger.All that angry talk drains away a blues atmosphere, which could have made the film sultry and moody.Casting and acting are acceptable. But characters talk ninety miles an hour. It's as if the director is timing actors' lines of dialogue with a stopwatch. The music is generally disappointing. One of the production numbers in the second half, "Says Who? Says You, Says I" is just awful.The B&W cinematography is okay, but there are too many dissolves. And a montage that details a psychiatric problem is so visually juvenile that it looks like something from a high school drama class experiment.Production design is drab, bleak, and cheap looking. But at least it gives what is probably a fairly accurate representation of film sets used during the Great Depression.Overall, "Blues In The Night" is disappointing, mostly because of a script that is too talky and so rigidly plot bound that the intended musical blues theme gets smothered.

tbear_43 What an interesting idea: a film noir musical. While some of the acting was a bit over the top by today's standards, this film is a masterpiece of classic noir with great music, as well. The story line is formulaic, but weren't most of the in those days? I loved the song Bacall sang in THE BIG SLEEP, but BLUES IN THE NIGHT makes brings the music to the forefront, giving the viewer/listener a fuller experience. What a femme fatale Kay is, and she leaves us with no doubt about it: out for herself, jealous, envious, self pitying, willing to sacrifice anything for what she wants, but once she gets it, goes about making it as miserable as possible. Even her death at the hands of a man she scorns as unworthy in every way is poetic justice.I'm glad TCM is running BLUES IN THE NIGHT a bit more. I'm ready to see it again tight away!

luannjim Everybody's heard of this movie because of the famous title song, but almost nobody's ever seen it. It defies genre classification -- both a musical drama and a sort of missing link between the Warners gangster movies of the 1930s (mugs, molls, and rat-a-tat dialogue) and 1940s film noir (femme fatale, dark shadows, smoky atmosphere, seamy underside of life). It's a genuine one-of-a-kind movie that deserves to be much better remembered than it is.However, one commenter here needs to refresh his memory; BLUES IN THE NIGHT has nothing whatever to do with the career of Jimmy Lunceford or any other famous musician of the period. It's about a small jazz combo, not a big band, and they begin and end the movie as obscure journeymen living from hand to mouth between gigs.

robertc39 Saw this movie many years ago. Enjoyed it then and would probably enjoy it now. What strikes me as strange is that this movie is a bio of the Jimmy Lunceford band, which was one of the great bands of the 30's and 40's, which was black however in the movie all band members are portrayed as white. The movie was probably made at a major studio at the time and did not want to take a chance on making an all black movie and possibly losing money. There were a number of black actors available at the time that could have made the picture. Look at Stormy Weather, Cabin in the sky etc.Anyone have any thoughts? Guess the world had a lot of prejudice at the time.