St. Louis Blues, made in the first year of sound, reveals why Bessie Smith is the Empress of the Blues. Her only movie role, it is a melodramatization of the classic song by W. C. Handy, who chose her for the part. She gloriously displays the passion and paradox of the blues-a joy to behold and hear while in deepest despair. Black and Tan marked the musical and dramatic screen debut of the great Duke Ellington and His Cotton Club Orchestra. Visually imaginative and carefully shot, the film veers between 1930s black-and-white reality and the fainting dancer's (the beguiling Freddie Washington) black-and-tan fantasy. Jammin' the Blues: "One glance at the performers involved and it's easy to understand why this is the most famous jazz short ever made...The music is out of sight-especially a jam featuring stellar tenor man Lester Young." (PFA '75) Mingus, the antithesis of the manufactured jazz movie, documents the forced eviction of and defiance by one of the greatest pioneers in African American classic music. Charles Mingus-a Segovia of the bass, prolific composer and amazing bandleader-lived his life like his beloved music: in "extended forms and prolonged chords," (from his infamous autobiography, Beneath the Underdog), disturbed and disturbing, sublime and lowdown. His widow said, "He made you live at the top of yourself." He's shown here at both ends, but he's feistily howling a Haitian fight song in spirit. --Vicci Wong