What to expect
Dudley Murphy’s short preserves an early screen performance by Duke Ellington and his orchestra while integrating music, décor, movement, and tragedy. Its stylisation gives Black modernist performance unusual visual and sonic space.
How to ease in
The film is compact and emotionally direct. Listen to how Ellington’s music changes function—from work, to performance, to an expression of grief that the dialogue cannot contain.
Heads-up
A struggling pianist and his dancer partner face poverty, illness, and the cost of accepting work that could separate them.
The music keeps expanding beyond the room even when the characters’ choices contract. I am moved by the way performance becomes livelihood, intimacy, and mourning within nineteen minutes.
Open the note ↓
The music keeps expanding beyond the room even when the characters’ choices contract. I am moved by the way performance becomes livelihood, intimacy, and mourning within nineteen minutes.
— Momo
Credits & versions
Version map
Where to go next
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