This was a splendidly uneven, jerkily edited version available on DVD, apparently with large elements of the original Mingus score missing. Even so, it's a gripping, uneasy, naked psychodrama of a film, taking in a series of scrubby interiors (living room, bar, basement club, alleyway), none shot so as to make their environs any sort of character. We follow a nightclub singer, his engaging manager, a trumpeter of his entourage, and various wideboys and hangers-on through a handful of parties, off-hand and distracted exchanges, and through a compulsive central meeting in which a white peripheral scenester, plainly out of his depth with a Nefertiti-esque girl, referred to as 'sister' by the singer, obviously responds badly to the black characters who return to her apartment and interrupt his doe-eyed seduction attempt. It's visceral and demanding stuff, only finding some light relief with the sparkling repartee between thensinger and his cajoling, reassuring, long-suffering manager. The jazz that remains on the lumpy soundtrack is suitably ghostly, demi-evolved and convulsive. 
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