All Night Long
Basil Dearden · 1962
Basil Dearden’s All Night Long transposes Shakespeare’s Othello to a single night at a Thames-side jazz party, starring Patrick McGoohan as a scheming drummer, Paul Harris as a bandleader, and Marti Stevens as his wife. With contributions from Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus and John Dankworth, the film treats jazz not as ornament but as narrative grammar — its rhythms, improvisations and silences shaping character and consequence. Shot in black and white by Edward Scaife, written by blacklisted screenwriter Paul Jarrico, it is a study in mediation, mistrust and the cost of control.
