All Night Long (1962)

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All Night Long (1962) – B. Dearden

British director Basil Dearden shot this “modern” retelling of Othello in a one room set for the jazz set.  It’s a big London warehouse with a couple of side rooms where an all night party (featuring Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, and others) is happening.  The party is in honor of Rex and Delia, a jazz pianist and singer, respectively.  She has halted her career because he wanted her to and his controlling nature allows the film’s Iago, drummer Johnny Cousins (played with an odd American accent by Patrick McGoohan), to set the couple against each other, with the aid of not too bright sax player, Cass.  The camera whirls around the party, following different players when necessary (usually tracing Johnny’s steps as he hatches his plan to get Delia to join his band), all the while observing the swinging jazz gig that is also punctuating the soundtrack.  The B&W cinematography is all high contrast and almost noirish at times.  McGoohan excels at pathetic but the plot machinations are a little too overt and one wonders why he doesn’t get exposed earlier. A few surely controversial elements (pot-smoking, inter-racial relationships) are treated as non-issues. Yet in the end, the whole thing feels suspended in amber, not quite authentic, not quite artificial, not quite present, not quite past.