Street Scene (1931 King Vidor)

Street Scene comes over initially like a filmed play, which it was (Elmer Rice wrote both), with characters in front of a tenement building interacting, but as it goes on, it looks like we're in an actual New York street, the more evident the higher that crane mounted camera sweeps - but in fact it's a giant set. Quite how they then incorporated the climactic scene in which a mass of people flood in and traffic's brought to a halt, I'm not sure.

Young Silvia Sidney's being wooed by both her boss Walter Miller and the son of a Jewish free-thinker  William Collier Jr., who's a bit of a wimp, whilst her mother Estelle Taylor seems to be having quite a public flirtation with Russell Hopton, of which husband David Landau becomes more and more suspicious. (It doesn't help that all the neighbours - including waspish Beulah Bondi - disapprove.) John Qualen's the janitor.

I suppose the characters are quite clichéd - intellectual Jew, Irish bully, easy-going Italian (George Humbert)... Generally well-acted though.

I mentioned that camera - Vidor uses the crane artfully, taking us from window to window - the final shot is one giant pull backwards and up as Sidney leaves - very effective. And the rather over-done montage after the shot's fired and about a dozen people rush into the camera seems like another vestige of twenties cinema. Undeniably exciting scenes, though.

It's shot by George Barnes and scored by Lionel Newman, with some borrowing of Gershwin.

Amusingly, I note the copy we have, a from-VHS TCM transmission, took place at 4.30 a.m.

Kurt Weill made an opera out of it in 1947.

Out of the Past (1947 Jacques Tourneur)

Classic noir, serpentine and dangerous as a snake in a bad mood.

It begins with the camera in the back of the seat - three years before Gun Crazy - just saying. (I seem to be a bit fascinated by this - see this post, for example.)

Written by 'Geoffrey Homes' aka Daniel Mainwaring, from his novel 'Build My Gallows High' and - uncredited - James M Cain and Frank Fenton. Mainwaring's other screen credits include The Big Steal, This Woman Is Dangerous, The Phenix City Story and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Funnily enough, like Restless, our preceding film, it's about someone who's been keeping low for years but then is found and drawn back into the past.

Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb (Kirk's No. 2), Steve Brodie (Mitch's partner), Virginia Huston (his girlfriend), child actor Dickie Moore. Shot by Nicholas Musuraca, music by Roy Webb, nice direction of mood by Tourneur.

With great moments of tension, Hopperish lighting and snappy dialogue it's a perfect alignment of talents.

Donald Macperson in Time Out has this to say: "Beguiling and resolutely ominous..The mood of obsession was never more powerfully suggestive: Mitchum waiting for Greer in a Mexican bar beneath a flashing neon sign sums it up - nothing happens, but everything is said... All these B movie poets [Mainwaring, Musuraca, Tourneur] were under contract to RKO in the winter of 1946, and produced the best movie of everyone involved - once seen, never forgotten."

I don't know if it had a higher budget than some of the RKO features but it does move around artfully all over the place - San Francisco and Acapulco are stock shots, of course, but we do seem to be in Tahoe, Nevada, Reno, Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Now I've another thing to study next time - Eddie Muller points out that Musuraca is not lighting in total chiaroscuro but using fill lights to detail some of the interior backgrounds - have to look out for that. Doesn't apply to his Hopper touches, above, of course. It is beautifully shot.

Restless (2012 Edward Hall)

Last seen in 2016. A crafty script finding things to say about the war that are unusual (that the Brits were actively trying to 'help' the US into the war, with misinformation) and like other true stories (the SOE, for example) a unit being betrayed from within. We are constantly wondering who is or isn't or might be a traitor - amusingly, Eva is actually lying to her daughter too. Another great, plucky heroine from William Boyd (his novel 'Brazzaville Beach' also has one in the shape of Hope Clearwater, 'Sweet Caress' has Amory Clay).

US scenes shot in South Africa. Good music from Lorne Balfe (many credits including The Crown and War On Everyone), cinematography David Higgs. Interesting writing credit 'By William Boyd' - not 'Screenplay by.. and based on the novel by..' Wonder if he asked for that specifically?

Good cast: Atwell, Sewell, Rampling, Dockery, Gambon, Reuten, Scarborough.

L.A. Story (1991 Mick Jackson)

Not quite sure why Woody Harrelson isn't credited.

Nebraska (2013 Alexander Payne)

A poignant film about family, written by Bob Nelson.

Glad to see that both Bruce Dern and Phedon Papamichael were Oscar and BAFTA nominated.

Mark Orton's simple score is memorable.

Paper Moon

The Help (2011 Tate Taylor & scr)

This is about the gestation of the film. It's a great screenplay and very nicely balanced between the cruel and awful and the sweet and lovely. It's not just about racism either, but friendship, female independence and child-rearing.

It's an absolutely outstanding ensemble cast - there weren't enough places for them all to be nominated. The fact that Taylor was a former actor probably helped. Emma Stone's just great, easily herself could have been nominated. Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney, Ahna O'Reilly (Octavia's employer), Anna Camp (the one with the perfect hair), Chris Lowell, Cicely Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Leslie Jordan (Will and Grace), Eleanor and Emma Henry (the little girl - "You is kind. You is smart. You is important."), Aunjanue Ellis (her arrest is I think deliberately made to look very contemporary), Mary Steenbergen, Nelsan Ellis, Mike Vogel (Jessica's husband), David Oyelowo, Dana Ivey (Sleepless in Seattle, Two Weeks' Notice, Sabrina, Legally Blonde 2), Kelsey Scott, Brian Kerwin.

Q informs me these two are great friends

Taylor himself was born in Jackson, Mississippi, as did the author Kathryn Stockett (she's white, by the way).

Love the line delivered by Viola to O'Reilly: "You give my sweet girl a chance." Brilliant line - "my sweet girl..."

And Emma missing her step on the stairs with a little scream.

기생충 / Parasite (2019 Bong Joon Ho & co-scr)

A film of firsts: well, it was the first film from South Korea we've seen*, it was the first foreign film to win the Best Picture Oscar, the first South Korean film to win the Palme D'Or.

A poor sub-basement family wants more, and use wily trickery to get it from a wealthy family - where they find another basement family, and the tables turn. Quite unexpected and black and funny, we were discussing it still hours later. It's a pointed social comedy, emphasised by the smell of the poorer lot, and which must have annoyed North Korea because of its success, Oscar recognition and it's North Korean TV presenter piss-take performed by the mother.

Good cast: the family are Park So-Dam ('I Googled 'art therapy''), Choi Woo-shik, Song Kang-ho (he and the director have often collaborated) and Jany Hye-jin as the practical mother; the affluent family are naive mother Cho Yeo-jeong, Jeong Ji-so (daughter) and Park Myung-hoon; the housekeeper is Lee Jeong-eun and her husband Lee Sun Gyun.

It won the Oscar for Best Film, Foreign Film, Screenplay (with Jon Won Han) and Director, BAFTA for Best Foreign Film and original screenplay. Cinematography from Kyung-pyo Hong, music Jaeil Jung.

It's a great screenplay, funny and clever, Bong's (or Ho's - I don't know my way round these Korean names yet) direction is crisp. Tarantino's long been a fan - he rates the 2003 Memories of Murder as one of the best.

The scene where the basement husband says he's not sure if he can remember not being there is oddly affecting.

*Ed. No it wasn't - that was Oldboy.

Hollywood (2020 Creator Ryan Murphy)

Had I realised it was from Feud's Ryan Murphy I would have jumped on it much quicker. A 'What If' wish fulfilment film about Hollywood, race and sexuality, and why not? It's something different, and enjoyable, though I'm sure the target of much criticism, particularly with the George Floyd protests ringing in our ears.

The main five are: David Corenswet (actor-gigolo), Darren Criss (director), Laura Harrier (BlacKkKlansman), Jeremy Pope (writer), Jake Picking (Rock).

The older cast is maybe more assured: Jim Parsons is great, Rob Reiner, Patti LuPone (his wife), Samara Weaving (daughter, who Q places from Home and Away), Michelle Krusiek (Anna May Wong), Holland Taylor (Legally Blonde), Joe Mantello (head of production), Dylan McDermott ('gas station' manager), Queen Latifah (Hattie), William Frederick Knight (editor), Maude Apatow, Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite).

A minor cavil (which may be intentional) is that the film terms 'lensed', helmed' and 'green lit' all sound anachronistic to me.

Handsomely photographed (mainly) by Simon Dennis (The Limehouse Golem, Peaky Blinders), good music by Nathan Barr (good interview with him here), and from Woody Allen's record collection. Production design by Matthew Flood Ferguson.

Ryan Murphy Productions via Netflix.

Made us start debating race in Hollywood. How Hattie's Oscar win changed nothing. How though Poitier had his double whammy in 1967, he wasn't the lead. And that maybe the first mainstream film with a black lead was Shaft. And how relatively few films since have had one. Lots of great co-stars. Maybe just more recently, the tide's turned, with TV's Luther, and Ray, Django Unchained, Precious, Black Panther, Moonlight, 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, The Eddy...

Here's the real Anna May Wong, by the way:

Her best known films were probably Fairbanks' Thief of Bagdad and Shanghai Express, and was indeed turned down for The Good Earth as not having the right kind of oriental look - Luise Rainer played the role in make-up and did win the Oscar. So it's lovely that she's been 'reborn' and given her proper moment in the spotlight.

Killing Eve - Season 3 (2020)

It's definitely gone off the boil - we struggled through it. Jumping geographies now seems a chore. Harriet Walter is a useful addition, but now it feels like there's too many characters.

Most enjoyed the episode where Villanelle returns to her family home in Russia (and ends up killing most of them).

Good music as usual.

Writers are Suzanne Heathcote, Anna Jordan, Laura Neal, Elinor Cook, Krissie Ducker. Where did they all come from?

Topper Returns (1941 Roy Del Ruth)

Joan Blondell (always fun to see her in anything), Roland Young, Billie Burke, Carole Landis, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, George Zucco, George O'Keefe, H.B. Warner, Donald McBride (detective). 

I first reviewed this (8 March 2010) as: 'Entertaining mix of spooky house thriller and ghostly madcappings with Burke and Rochester having fun and a particularly surreal moment with a seal. A happy jumble sale of old elements.'

It's almost exactly like an episode of Scooby Doo, only funnier (Burke: "It doesn't rain inside. And if it has, it's cleared up now.") Written by Jonathan Latimer and Gordon Douglas (who later directed Them).

Made by Hal Roach Studios, photographed by Norbert Brodine.

Crisis in Six Scenes (2016 Woody Allen & scr)

It's the 1960s - hence all the backing music is jazz. Race riots, unnecessary wars, police brutality, corrupt politicians - remind you of anything?

Married couple Woody Allen and Elaine May (a pairing that works great) are visited by her family friend's girl Miley Cyrus, who's become a radical, on the run from the police, and starts to eat all of Woody's food, including - amusingly - Chinese takeaway, breakfast sturgeon and navel oranges (she doesn't stop eating). She turns the head of their house guest John Magaro, who's supposed to be marrying Rachel Brosnahan, none other than The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (she'd been in many things before this, including House of Cards). Meanwhile May's becoming radicalised, and it spreads to her book group, with amusing results.

It's great fun. Woody to policemen, "You must be going now, gentlemen. I'm sure the neighborhood is rife with fiends". And later "This is the worst day of my life, and it's still early".

We'd heard Woody with Alec Baldwin in a podcast earlier in the day, and he told us all the only thing he's any good at is comedy writing.

Little Fires Everywhere (2020)

Reese Witherspoon - amusing that there's a book club. Celeste Ng wrote the novel. Kerry Washington (Ray, The Last King of Scotland. Django Unchained), who looks constantly wound up, and is an edgy character, so annoying, I was glad when it finished not to have to look at her any more. (Both the character and the performance are annoying, just to be clear.) With Lexi Underwood (her daughter), Megan Stott (Reese's gay daughter), Joshua Jackson (husband), Jade Pettyjohn, Jordan Elsass & Gavin Lewis (other kids), Rosemarie DeWitt, Huang Lu, AnnaSophia Robb (young Elena).

My initial reaction was 'Not one of those ones where we have to wait seventeen hours to find out who burned the house down...' Unfortunately, and predictably, it was - the ending is preposterous - but we didn't really care who did it by the end. Ultimately, each mother is as bad as the other.

Actually the couple who have their baby stolen is also preposterous. I seem to be using that word a lot, recently.

My attention began to wander around the nineteenth montage. There's one decent song, Marvin Gaye 'Piece of Clay'.

The acting is all a bit samey. And it's all very symbolic.

There's a missed interesting storyline here - the town was one of the first against segregation, but later it's revealed that there's hardly any black people there... Why?

Directed by John Ford (1971, revised 2006 Peter Bogdanovich & scr)

With Orson Welles narrating, and commentary from John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Spielberg, Scorsese, Walter Hill, Harry Carey. Ford remains the director who's won the Oscar more than any other director (four). Clint Eastwood's clearly a fan, too.

He sounded like a bit of a bastard, singling out actors and ridiculing them, to produce a sort of on-set anxiety. We see a long single take from Two Rode Together in which he's previously told both Stewart and Richard Widmark how great the other one is. Other tricks were to only rehearse up to a point, to preserve the immediacy of the scene, and to get first or second takes for the same reason. And to remove dialogue as much as possible (including, memorably, tearing pages of script out).

Ford had some kind of romantic relationship with Katharine Hepburn, who had impressed him by standing up to him. Peter posits (and Clint agrees) that it's because of this that he made such a great series of films in 1939 - 41 - Stagecoach, Young Mr Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk (farmers struggle with Indians and the Revolutionary War), The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage Home (perilous voyage of British ship), Tobacco Road (hillbillies in Georgia) and How Green Was My Valley.

How Green Was My Valley

Not from the film, in fact, but a good photo from John R Hamilton

BlacKkKlansman (2018 Spike Lee)

A timely viewing of a true story, brilliantly written by Lee & Kevin Willmott, and David Rabinowitz and Charlie Wachtel (who originally optioned and adapted Ron Stallworth's book). Whilst brilliantly managing to present / argue various sides, it remains very funny.

John David Washington is just right, and Adam Driver adds a certain something to every film he's in. Laura Harrier then turned up in Hollywood.

With its horrific Jesse Armstrong lynching story related by Harry Belafonte, The Birth of a Nation and its ending on the Virginia killing it couldn't be more timely, yet as the George Floyd news shows us, nothing seems to have changed.

I would have finished Black Film Day with Blazing Saddles, but it was getting on. As it happened, it was Oscar Day as well (and Clint Eastwood's 90th birthday).

Funny to get a Cybill / Last Picture Show reference so coincidentally.

1917 (2019 Sam Mendes)

OK, there were no Black people in this one (well, one) but we had to experience this other Award winner. And what an incredible experience. Like Birdman it appears to be filmed in a single take, but because of the extremely artful way it's been composed and executed, it doesn't have the same feeling of claustrophobia - where the camera is positioned gives you different compositions and shot sizes, whilst the single take gives you the intensity of the story.

Roger Deakins won his second Oscar and fifth BAFTA for the way he has photographed this, using a variety of kits - Steadicam, Trinity (the three-axis hybrid stabilizer, operated by Charlie Rizek), a cable wire (remote-controlled from a vehicle), or hand-held with a stabilized camera, and the edits are very skilfully blended together by Lee Smith. There's lots of CGI, but it has all been extremely well planned, rehearsed and designed.

Love the way that George MacKay's mate Dean-Charles Chapman appears to have turned an unpleasant colour from his wound in that brief moment he's off camera.

My favourite sequence, lit by flares

Roger's favourite shot

Amidst all this cleverness we occasionally bump into the likes of Danny Mays, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch and Richard Madden.

Written by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, scored by Thomas Newman, production design by Dennis Gassner.

The film won the BAFTA for Best Film and Best British Film, Director, Cinematographer, Production Design, Sound and Special Visual Effects. (We were laughing about the way the sound guys must get annoyed when all their work is then covered over with the score.)

There is an alternative ending - the writing in the letter has been washed away in the river so the attack goes ahead and the brother dies.

No doubt someone's made a Paths of Glory comparison (the tracking shots around the trenches).

Moonlight (2016 Barry Jenkins & co-scr)

It was the year of La La Land - but this won Best Film and Screenplay (adapted, from story by Tarell Alvin McCraney), and Mahershala Ali (True Detective, Hidden Figures, Green Book, House of Cards, Treme, The Place Beyond the Pines, since 2001) won for Best Supporting Actor. His full name is the Biblical Mahershalalhashbaz!

We wanted a Black Film Day after the George Floyd killing.

Miami. 'Little' (Alex Hibbert) is being bullied - charismatic drug dealer Mahershala Ali and his girlfriend Janelle Monae (Hidden Figures) look out for him, but it turns out one of his clients is Little's mum, Naomie Harris, who's a nightmare.

'Chiron' (Ashton Sanders) is now a teenager, and he's still being bullied, though experiences a sexual encounter with his friend Kevin (Jharrel Jerome). Ali's gone (dead or in prison, we guess) and the mum is still a mess.

Then in 'Black' Chiron has essentially become the Ali dealer figure, having moved to Atlanta, where his mum is at least finally clean, but he seeks out his old beach buddy, now played by The Eddy's André Holland. It's in this episode we finally hear some rap, after refreshingly the soundtrack has been classical (Nicholas Britell).

We thought it was great.

Photographed by James Laxton. Half Nelson's Anna Boden gets a 'Thanks'.

The Last Picture Show (1971 Peter Bogdanovich & co-scr)

A lot has been said about Jeff Bridges' first star part, and Cybill Shepherd's debut, but what struck me on this viewing is how good Timothy Bottoms is - his face as he's struggling with inner conflicts and picking up on those around him. That last look between 'Sam the Lion' Ben Johnson and Bottoms and Bridges as they set off for Mexico... It's fatherly, man-to-man, still annoyed with them because of Billy (Sam Bottoms), the old to the new...

Considering it was Peter's only second film, made when he was in his early thirties, it's a really mature film, very melancholic, like the work of someone much older. The fact that his dad died during filming probably contributed. I feel its sadness more and more each time I see it. 

It's very well acted by everyone. Peter ends his film like Ambersons - a film with which it has a sense of melancholy and nostalgia in common - with each cast member receiving a solo credit at the film's conclusion. Cloris Leachman's impassioned outburst to Bottoms at the end - "You didn't even have to be careful of me" - she said after the first take she could do better - "No you can't" said Bogdanovich - she won the Oscar - but still maintained she could have done it better. 

"I'm round that corner now - you've ruined it."

Written by Peter and Larry McMurty and based on the latter's novel. With: Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, Clu Gulager, Sharon Ullrick, Randy Quaid. Photographed by Robert Surtees. I must go and sob into my cereal now.

Targets (1968 Peter Bogdanovich & scr)

Yes, it was originally that Karloff owed Roger Corman two days' work, which is how Peter got the gig - in fact, Karloff worked five days, and Peter had another eighteen, to make nevertheless a 'B' movie with class, one that could look down on 'A' pictures of the same time. Despite budget limitations it's very classily done, and seems to me to have little nods to people like Hitch (Rear Window) and Welles (that vertical tracking shot like Citizen Kane), and clearly Hawks, which Bogdanovich himself, playing the director, finds running on TV and immediately becomes hooked (it's Karloff again, in The Criminal Code).

Polly Platt's contribution to the story (revealed in the director's blog 'The Plot Thickens'), the apple pie serial killer, based on the 'Texas Tower Sniper' Charles Whitman, makes a chilling element much more scary than anything Karloff would appear in (thus underlining the irony of this film, in which Karloff ultimately dispatches the killer in an almost comical but stunning finale) - I've a feeling I've completely contradicted myself there. Anyway, uncredited, Sam Fuller also contributed many ideas to the screenplay. (Bogdanovich's character is called Samuel Michaels - Fuller's middle name).

Verna Fields has an early credit as a sound editor, and she does a good job (the car stereo gets louder the closer it is to the camera), and all the freeway shooting scene was shot silent, with twenty eight to thirty audio tracks added by her afterwards. And the cutting is great, for example in the scene that sniper Tim O'Kelly tries to shake off a following police car. The scenes with Peter and Karloff are great, and Nancy Hsueh acquits herself as the involved PA.

Laszlo Kovacs makes a good early impression in his night scenes, though the cigarette-in-the-dark Rear Window moment is amusingly cheesy - and some of the night exterior shots are funny in that you can hardly see anything - the ending is a beautiful, low budget mish-mash.

Overall it's very competent - you can see that Peter knows exactly what he's doing (long, slow track in on Karloff whilst he's going his 'appointment in Samarra' story) and had delivered his first and only thriller. That scene is preceded by a journalist asking Karloff the most mundane questions, which in itself is funny as Peter had already had years of experience talking to great directors, and you can be sure he didn't start by asking 'What's it feel like being in motion pictures?' (although while writing this I'm watching Peter's John Ford documentary and the scene where he interviews him in front of Monument Valley and Ford gives terse, one word answers, is hilarious). In fact this moment of Peter the director playing the film director protecting the star playing a star against the stupid journalist is very memorable and sweet.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were both murdered before the film's release and as such, Paramount became nervous and it played hardly at all. (That was a bad sentence.) Though the reviews were good, particularly that in the New York Times.

The nonchalant sandwich before the killing starts...

Love the clouds in this shot

After Life - Season 2 (2020 Ricky Gervais & scr)

Seems to be more off-puttingly crude than the last series - particularly in scenes involving 'therapist' Paul Kaye (who no one would ever return to visit for a second time) and disgusting David Earl. And postmen just don't come in to your house a take a bath.

However, when something sweet happens, like with colleague Mandeep Dhillon, or fellow mourner Penelope Wilton, it's really sweet.

Maybe that's the point.

Also rather successful in its evocation of grief, loss and depression. But after losing someone, "Life goes on" someone says, quoting Robert Frost at him. "It's not as good," he replies, "but there you go".

His episode four playout is David Bowie, 'Can You Hear Me?'

With Roisin Conaty, Kerry Godliman, Ashley Jensen, David Bradley, Diane Morgan. Tony Way, Tom Basden, Joe Wilkinson, Jo Hartley.

The Eddy (2020 Creator Jack Thorne)

Film 1. Elliot. Directed by Damian Chazelle in unsteadycam. It's like cinema verité. Thorne wrote or co-wrote them all. His contribution written up here.

2. Julie. Like those Edward Lear Cautionary Poems - Julie, Who Gets Herself into a Very Sticky Situation. Chazelle again, with his trademark long take through the Club as Elliot searches for her.

3. Ariana. Funeral, illustrated by jazz, and speeches. Good.

4. Jude. Our bass player's a junkie, and his ex turns up announcing she's to be married. He witnesses, then takes them to a wedding where the band's gigging. Annoying Julie has moved into Maja's. Co-written with Rachel De-Lahay, Rebecca Lanciewicz

5. Talking of who... Maja. Gets offered another gig by Tcheky Karyo, Elliott gets himself more and more in the shit by not simply telling the police what's going on. The band is finally offered a recording deal.

6. Sim. Tries to get money for gran to go to Mecca - fails. Ends up singing his own song at the club with Julie backing. Written with Hamid Hlioua

7. Katerina. Why has our drummer been so taciturn, so busy - why did she get involved with the crime gang? This explains all. Written with Phillip Howze, Rebecca Lanciewicz.

8. Untitled conclusion has Elliot finally going to the police, making it good with Julie, and finally performing again (but only with her support), before the club is fire-bombed.

André Holland (Moonlight, The Knick) is Elliot, Joanna Kulig the only name I knew. Amandla Stenberg is Julie, Tahat Rahim (Farid), Leila Behkti his wife. Randy Kerber is the composer. orchestrator and keyboard player who helped prepare Ryan Gosling for La La Land, and the rest of the band also comprises real life musicians Ludovic Louis (trumpet), Lada Obradovic (her solo drumming is amazing), Jowee Omicil (sax) and Damian Nueva Cortes (bass), with many of them never having been on screen before.

The whole thing came about on the back of  the Whiplash debut when Chazelle was approached (by Six Feet Under producer Alan Poul) to do something set in a jazz club in Paris - thereby foreshadowing La La Land in two ways. He's an exec producer. Poul in turn had been contacted by music producer Glen Ballard, who had already assembled the band.

This is the Paris on the wrong side of the péripherique, very multicultural, amplified with good background sound.

Photographed by Julien Poupard (four episodes), Eric Gautier (the first two).

James Baldwin's 'The Price of the Ticket' is a series of articles about the experience of being black in America - he had written some of them in Paris.

Loved Elliot's line: "One day I woke up and saw I had left myself behind."