A 1972 Party at Duke Ellington's Townhouse Took 50 Years to Become a Film
In 1972, in Duke Ellington's townhouse, Greaves gathered the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance era — people from literature, music, theatre and politics. What he ended up with was a raucous, contentious party that caught the spirit of the Renaissance and of the surviving people who had lived through it.
That gathering became Once Upon a Time in Harlem, a film quite literally 50 years in the making, released more than a decade after Greaves's death. David Greaves completes the work of Louise Greaves, William's widow and lifelong collaborator, who did not get to finish the film before she died.
A party is an odd instrument for an archive, but a raucous, needle-some one may be a truer record of a movement than a round of polite tributes would have been.
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For a film built on a party, the host is the whole apparatus: Greaves, in his mid-forties here, interjects to redirect, opens new topics, and prods the shy guests into talking.
A host only sets the table. The line worth taking home belongs to Robert Nugent — “I don't work hard, but I work sincerely” — and no moderator prompts that out of anyone.
Sincerity has a cost, though: fifty years in the making is either the sincerest thing about this film or a strong argument for deadlines.