Jonas and the Wail

One of the more unusual uses to which Duke Ellington's music was put (beaten only, perhaps, by East St Louis Toodle-O deployed as the soundtrack to a film about vampire bats) was setting the 1957 German film Jonas to the music Ellington had composed and recorded a decade earlier, The Liberian Suite. Ellington received an award for his music in the film.

Directed by Ottomar Domnick and starring Robert Graf, the film is essentially the story of a man who loses his hat, steals another and spends the duration of the film suffering an existential angst as a result. The Liberian Suite fits in quite well with the film.

The story of a loner and average person in the maze of the modern city, caught between the traumatic aftermath of the war and the perceived cold in the young Federal Republic.

Press reviews

A pearl of German 1950s cinema. A furious look into the psyche of a neurotic character. The great Robert Graf, who died early, plays a city citizen in the young Federal Republic consumed by guilt trauma. The setting in Stuttgart becomes an anonymous threatening backdrop for the economic miracle of the Federal Republic of Germany with echoes of George Orwell, Kafka and the German cinema expressionism of the 1920s.

Recently, the following lobby shots, crediting Ellington with the film's music,  came up for sale on eBay. A nice souvenir but postal costs were prohibitive, so here they are:

And here are some further stills from the website linked above.