Les Blank

Tonight's lineup on TCM is another night in the "Jazz on Film" spotlight, with five foreign films apparently featuring jazz in the soundtrack, at least for some values of jazz:

The Warped Ones (Japan, 1960) at 8:00 PM;
Elevator to the Gallows (France, 1958) at 9:30 PM;
Knife in the Water (Poland, 1962) at 11:15 PM;
Pale Flower (Japan, 1964) at 1:00 AM; and
Black Orpheus (Brazil, 1959) at 3:00 AM.

However, I'd like to recommend the movie that follows all of these, even though it's not a foreign film: Always for Pleasure, at 5:00 AM.

Directed by documentarian Les Blank, Always for Pleasure is a loving look at New Orleans, at least as it was in the late 1970s and a side of the city you wouldn't normally see in the travel shows of today or the one-reel Traveltalks shorts. Instead, it looks more like what you'd get from somebody who lives well away from the touristy parts of a city but has pride in the less touristy parts and wants to show them off.

I last saw it about five years ago when TCM ran a night of Blank's documentaries, and if memory serves, there's the standard-issue jazz funeral procession of the sort that was highlighted in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die; soul singer Irma Thomas explaining the best way to cook certain New Orleans dishes; and grass-roots preparations for the Mardi Gras. It's all well worth watching.

A whole bunch of Blank's documentaries were assembled and put out on a Criterion box set, which unfortunately means that it's rather pricey. So I'd really recommend catching this TCM showing if you can.