Too Late Blues

A quintessential Cassavetes picture, and a wholly atypical one, his first of only two Hollywood productions proves that the maverick director’s intuitively creative personality is a hard fit into the studio system. Yet, he makes those very clashes and compromises in real life the subject of his film. This story of an arrogant, hard-headed young pianist who, unwilling to tailor his art to the marketplace, loses his way and his romance is an easy comparison to Cassavetes’ own career. While the melodrama is not all on his terms, it still simmers with the raw emotion and turmoil that would come to mark the signature of the independent iconoclast.