The Blues A Musical Journey: Warming by the Devil's Fire

Writer/director Charles Burnett offers a slice of childhood autobiography, a summer away from his god-fearing West Coast family spent in the company of his louche-living Mississippi uncle Buddy. Expecting a baptism of the gospel variety, he's instead inducted into the way of sex and the blues. It's a languorous, even listless piece of storytelling that stands almost entirely on Burnett's dreamy parade of archive performers. Son House, Willie Dixon, WC Handy and a notably strong selection of women (Ida Cox, Mamie Smith, Bessie Smith) flit by, haunted spirits now doing the haunting.