Customer Reviews

Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues - Warming by the Devil's Fire

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Killer of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection Charles Burnett: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers)

Filmmaker Charles Burnett's contribution to the Scorsese/PBS blues series is brilliant and haunting. The history of the blues/blues artists is revealed through stunning documentary footage and the drama of a high-spirited uncle in Mississippi who sets out to inspire a young nephew visiting from Los Angeles. Burnett's embroidering of archival materials and a coming-of-age narrative is seamless, authentic, flawless!

I'm not sure what this film is suppose to be. It's a jumbled mess of performance clips and staged acting; like a documentary in need of editing interspersed in a made for TV movie - or visa versa.

You'll be hard pressed to actually learn anything as to how and why the blues developed. Any historical information is presented randomly and in no real chronological order. As for the performance clips, I didn't see anything that I haven't seen in other films about the blues.The only thing that caught my attention was a voice over by W.C. Handy.

This disjointed film offered nothing new to the history and legacy of the blues. It doesn't bother me so much that I wasted my money on this film; it bothers me more that I wasted my time!