The trouble with trying to work through the careers of your favourite artists is that you’re bound to find some failures here and there, which can be quite a disconcerting experience if you’re not careful. This applies very heavily to John Cassavetes, a true iconoclast of independent cinema, so much that his early career was defined by a couple of ill-conceived studio films that he only agreed to helm as a way to fund his passion projects. A Child is Waiting was solid but unremarkable, and was at the very least able to assemble a talented cast and a compelling story. The same can’t be said for Too Late Blues, his sophomore feature film, and his follow-up to the incredible Shadows, which was the film that immediately established him as an essential voice, and launched a career that would be one of the most important in terms of independent filmmaking. Cassavetes can’t be blamed for making this film – on the surface, it appears to be a reliable drama that simmers with the effortless nihilistic charm that defined his earlier films, gritty and visceral explorations of the human soul through the lens of different social contexts. However, when we get beneath the exterior, we see how ill-conceived this film actually is – not quite laughably bad as much as it is unfortunately lacking in nearly every area in which it should be succeeding triumphantly, Too Late Blues feels like the most minor work in the career of one of cinema’s most important visionaries. Thankfully, this film isn’t nearly awful enough to redefine Cassavetes as a filmmaker, but rather just a trivial bit of filmmaking that only carries the cultural cache of being one of three minor works in an otherwise incredible career, which should be restricted only to devotees of Cassavetes who tend towards completist tendencies, and fans of nihilistic jazz stories – for everyone else, Too Late Blues can be safely skipped entirely, since there really isn’t too much of value here that’s worth seeking out.

Too Late Blues centres on a small-time jazz band, who are led by the stoic John “Ghost” Wakefield (Bobby Darin), who wants his band to succeed, but not at the expense of abandoning his own independence. Their evenings are spent playing in low-rent joints and bars that don’t really appreciate them all that much, causing them to consistently be forgotten with the exception of a small group of supporters that gravitate towards them. The band is managed by the cunning Benny Flowers (Everett Chambers), a shifty talent agent who is willing to do the dirty work for the sake of helping his clients succeed, even if it means betraying their principles for the sake of a good gig – and the idea of financial success is more than enough for him to consistently employ his perverted industry techniques. Concurrently, Ghost is introduced to Jess Polanski (Stella Stevens), his agent’s girlfriend, who is herself an aspiring singer. The two begin to passionate romance, during which she becomes the band’s singer. The machinations of their relationship are mirrored by the band’s gradual growing success – they manage to wrangle a contract with a small but prestigious record label, and are set to produce their first album soon. However, Ghost doesn’t feel like he belongs in this world – he’s far too talented and yearns for something better. Secretly, Benny sets him up with a more substantial job, playing more elite crowds in solo performances, which boost his profile and put him in the midst of high society, but at the expense of his bandmates, who have been with him since the first day. He struggles to reconcile his own ambitions with the persistent flirtations of great commercial success, and the realization that doing what is right and what is easy isn’t always the most pleasant decision. He struggles with his own inner quandaries, wondering if leaving his band, who weren’t heading anywhere notable, was the right decision – and this isn’t even considering his relationship with Jess, who has only recently started to see this side of life for herself.

If anything, I’m actually very grateful for the existence of Too Late Blues, both for the final product and the background that went into the making of the film. Cassavetes trouble working on it are well-documented, and demonstrate a genius failing to have his vision realized as a result of the stifling studio system, which eventually pushed him away from the mainstream entirely. It would appear that rejoicing the relative failure of this and A Child is Waiting is somewhat sadistic, but considering how it caused the director to feel great disillusionment with the studio system, and instead pursue his own vision, proves how these films did the industry a great service. Had this film been a resounding success, it’s unlikely that Cassavetes would’ve attempted to make Faces less than a decade later, his powerful manifesto to the human condition that abandons larger budgets and all-star casts, and instead focuses on his own unique vision, allowing him to burrow deep into his own curiosities and exploit the aspects of the world around him that both fascinate him and incite a sense of unhinged existential despair. However, even taking it as it is, Too Late Blues does seem to have many of the director’s most interesting traits, which he’d eventually go on to refine in later years. Amongst these are his steadfast understanding of the mind of lonely people, with the character of Ghost feeling isolated from the world around him, perpetually in some state of great disillusionment with the industry he’s chosen, and constantly in conflict with both his peers and himself. He traverses different worlds, and becomes even more isolated when he realizes that without companionship of some sort, one is unlikely to survive. Naturally, despite being the heart of the film and the aspect that actually makes Too Late Blues worth watching, these themes are often dismissed in favour of more mellow, uninspired cliches that certainly heighten the stakes, but at the expense of more profound techniques that would’ve made for a very effective film, not just a disjointed, shallow piece of rushed filmmaking that feels as if it is entirely incomplete.

What is most disconcerting about Too Late Blues is that there is certainly a great film to be made with this material. Unlike his other two notable failures, Cassavetes wasn’t quite out of his depths here – the story is similar to the kind the director would do later in his career, just using more intimate means to tell it. The concept of a conflicted jazz musician battling his demons and questioning his own existence isn’t something entirely unconventional for Cassavetes, who could’ve doubtlessly made a masterpiece with this material. The problem comes in how the director had to sacrifice his own vision for the sake of appeasing those backing the production – suddenly, what could’ve been an elegant, slow-burning existential drama becomes an overwrought morality tale, punctuated with cliched dialogue, heavy-handed dialogue and emotions that rarely ever resemble anything authentic. Instead of being an intimate character study about the boundaries of loyalty and success, Too Late Blues is an overlong morality tale centred on a discussion of commercialism, where success is reviled, and sticking to one’s own roots is celebrated as the only decent decision one can make. It has some very interesting ideas, but never enough to compensate for the weaker filmmaking. It also doesn’t help much that the cast of the film isn’t particularly good. Bobby Darin is doing his best to be seen as a serious actor, but the flaws in his performance are far too notable for us to believe that he could play such a dramatic role. He always seems to be on the brink of bursting into song – and I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t hoping that he could, since the material he’s working with here is far too paltry for him to do anything memorable. Stella Stevens is wonderful, but is shifted to the background far too often, and is eventually abandoned as an interesting character, becoming very little more than a plot device. The only performance in Too Late Blues that feels somewhat effective of Everett Chambers as the sly agent – but this is really only because Chambers is playing a character that has to personify greed and corruption, which is the only area of the film that feels somewhat genuine. As a whole, the film really doesn’t do well with any of the potential it had.

Cassavetes seems to be fighting a losing battle with this film – throughout Too Late Blues, there are some moments that carry some glimmer of hope, almost as if the director is hinting that he was fully-intent on doing something more complex than this. Many have noted how this film’s plot seems to mirror its own production, especially since they centre on a talented young artist being consistently in conflict with the commercial world – but this only makes the final product all the more disconcerting, since there was clear real-world basis to what was being portrayed here, and the result is far less interesting than it could’ve been. As said before, Too Late Blues is a film that essentially opened up the world of independent filmmaking for Cassavetes, who took enormous advantage of the opportunities afforded to him after the experience of making this caused him to reconsider his place in the industry. It made him a true original, and for that we can actually be thankful, since its unlikely he’d have seen the more hideous side of the industry had he not been put through the wringer with this film. Less of an insult to the craft, and more of a misguided, deeply mediocre bundle of ideas that never really manifest into something coherent, Too Late Blues isn’t very good – and considering what promise there was embedded in the material, and the brilliant work Cassavetes was known to be capable of (it’s bewildering that someone saw Shadows and decided that this material was a perfect fit for the director), there could’ve been so much more to this film than we eventually got. An enormous disappointment, but the rare failure that actually serves a positive purpose, which is at least something of a merit to this otherwise unremarkable chore of a film.