An Ode to Repurposed Art

The year is 1961. Paul Newman is in love. So is Sydney Poitier. The city of Paris is a painting in hazy grayscale; a brooding romantic playground. For over 90 minutes, the two men find themselves wandering past sidewalk cafes and the Seine alongside two American girls, trying to sort out romantic feelings in between playing sets at a smoky jazz club. The film, appropriately titled Paris Blues, provides escapism at its finest. Almost immediately after watching it for the first time I realized that I enjoyed it so much because it bore similarities to another one of my favorite movies that also put jazz and complicated romance at the forefront of the plot. I’m talking, of course, about La La Land. Both films offer audiences their fair share of romanticism, while the latter serves as a love letter to Newman and Poitier’s modern world.