IS THERE A PERFECT JAZZ MOVIE?

I don’t mean films with great jazz soundtracks or films which are bog-standard, linear biographies of jazz musicians. I mean a film where the look, the dialogue and the ambience successfully captures the essence of the jazz culture and experience.

 Film criticism (like jazz criticism) is a very subjective business and those who read this might well disagree with all or some of what I say. As visitors to my house will know, I am a tremendous film as well as music enthusiast and my tastes range over film noir, French and Japanese movies, B westerns and British B crime films. 

Thinking about jazz movies for the current project, I’ve already jotted down notes about seven titles and I reckon I’ll need more than one Musing. 

Spoiler alert. In the end, I have concluded that there is one film only that does it for me. 

But let’s start with what I would describe as a few “near-misses”. I’ve giving points out of ten - not for the quality of the film but for its jazz-culture quotient.

 1. THE CONNECTION (1961)

Film version of Jack Gelber’s play, the first directed by the innovative Shirley Clarke. It’s a stage-bound production confined to the living room of a seedy apartment in a New York tenement. 

There is a great jazz quartet on the set almost throughout (Freddie Redd, Jackie McLean, Michael Mattos and Larry Ritchie) and they play some great tunes composed by Freddie Redd. 

But all the dramatis personae are junkies (except for “Sister Salvation” – an elderly lady in a bonnet - who blunders in and out) and the leading role and key character is a hyper-neurotic addict called Leach (think ‘leech’?) who overdoses and is only just revived by his “connection” Cowboy for whom everybody has been waiting for much of the running time. Leach is played by actor Warren Finnerty who gives a mesmerizing performance. 

The film is stark, bleak and claustrophobic and ran into difficulties over certification for release. Presumably the main problem was the subject matter of narcotics but, hilariously, the stumbling block for the N.Y.Dept of Education was the repeated use of the word “shit”. Blissfully unaware that this was slang for “drug”, they objected to so many apparent references to faeces………………………….. 

Basically THE CONNECTION is a (superb) film about heroin and the life-style of its victims. It’s therefore only tangentially concerned with the culture of jazz and a small and problematic corner of it at that.

8/10

2. ORNETTE COLEMAN – MADE IN AMERICA (1985)

I mention this next because, while THE CONNECTION was Shirley Clarke’s first film, this jumbled picture of Ornette was her last. It was twenty years in the making and is quite difficult to watch.

Filming was done in Fort Worth, Texas, Ornette’s birthplace and home town. A mixture of clips from gigs, talking heads (even William Burroughs gets a look in!), weird experimental videos and a rather unconvincing naturalistic recreation of Ornette’s childhood. 

The film climaxes with a live concert performance by Ornette with the Fort Worth symphony orchestra playing his composition Skies of America but I enjoyed most the 1968 footage (resurrected from a previous uncompleted film by Clarke) of Ornette, his son Denardo and bassist Charlie Haden. 

It’s always good to watch and hear anything by or about Ornette Coleman. He’s a fascinating jazz innovator and I treasure his early recordings with Don Cherry, Haden and Ed Blackwell or Billy Higgins on drums.  

But does this final cinematic offering from the late Shirley Clarke give us the essence of the jazz culture? Not really – Ornette is a fringe figure in the mainstream jazz tradition and the film is too arty, uneven and confused.

5/10

 3.  I CALLED HIM MORGAN  (2016)

You could call this a ‘documentary’ of sorts but it is far, far more than that. Seven years in the making and directed by Kasper Collin, it is very special:

·        There is stunning exterior cinematography of open spaces.

·        There is fascinating footage of Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Tootie Heath, Charlie Persip, Benny Maupin and many others.

·        There is a chilling and suspenseful recreation of the fatal night when Morgan was gunned down in Slugs jazz club.  

But the film plays out as something like a Greek tragedy based on the story of Lee’s partner Helen Morgan as fortuitously told to her teacher (a popular jazz DJ), when she enrolled as an adult student in his class. Within a month of unburdening herself, she was dead. 

What Helen had to tell, and what was so movingly and sensitively portrayed here on film, was her meeting with Lee, her falling in love with him, her painful and exhausting rescue of him from the heroin addiction which had stalled his career, his callous treatment of her when he recovered and resumed playing, his desertion of her and her final despairing and unhinged revenge by shooting.

There are respectful references to Lee’s history as a teenage prodigy under the wing of Dizzy Gillespie, his stint in the Art Blakey Jazz Messengers and his huge success as soloist and band leader in the sixties but the story is not his and he comes across as no hero. The story is hers. It is all about a doomed romance and a betrayal. Almost a neo-noir………………………………….

7/10

[More to come on jazz and movies in the next Musing]