Too Late Blues at the Portage tonight

One of our critics' picks this week is Too Late Blues, which screens tonight at the Portage Theater (4050 N Milwaukee Ave). It shouldn't be missed—not so much because it's a great movie, but because it's hard to see, and is arguably a crucial link when it comes to making sense of the storied, brilliant career of indie pioneer John Cassavetes. Made during a brief flirtation with studio filmmaking that followed the first and second versions of his directorial debut, Shadows (1959), the film tellingly (and perhaps self-reflexively) concerns a blues musician named Ghost (Bobby Darin), who struggles with a choice between commercial calculation and staying true to his idiosyncratic whims. On some level, this trade-off reflects Ghost's perception of his manhood. A crucial turning point in the movie involves his failure to protect an aspiring, depression-prone singer (Stella Stevens)—the woman he says he wants to marry—in a bar brawl.

Even with the film's relatively defined structure, the volatility and empathy of later Cassavetes is on full display; the characters say all the wrong things and act out at the wrong moments. While not as distinctively choppy as the director's signature work, Too Late Blues is also considerably rougher than your average Paramount production of 1961. There's a ring of mannerism in the dialogue ("I never saw anybody look so good in the sunlight before." "I never got in the sunlight before"), and Darin, both drawing on and complicating his public image, is more polished than the typical Cassavetes lead. Still, shot in ragged black-and-white, full off-kilter close-ups and surprising grace notes, Too Late Blues remains undervalued. The Northwest Chicago Film Society will screen a 35mm print at 7:30pm. $5.