Sight&Sound - 05.2020

May 2020 | Sight&Sound | 51

ALL THAT JAZZ:

TEN KEY FILMS TO WATCH

The Connection

Shirley Clarke, 1961

Jazz was as vital to the new American independent cinema of the 1950s

and 60s as it was to the era’s poetry and painting. One of the most famous

jazz-influenced films of this period was John Cassavetes’s Shadows (1959),

but just as vital was Clarke’s film, based on Jack Gelber’s play about a

group of jazz-scene heroin addicts waiting for their man: among the cast,

pianist Freddie Redd, who wrote the score, and altoist Jackie McLean.

Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise

Robert Mugge, 1980

John Coney’s 1974 Space Is the Place celebrated the myth, depicting

the legendarily eccentric Sun Ra as a traveller in space and time,

pursued by hostile Nasa agents. But Mugge’s documentary showed

the incendiary, wildly theatrical Arkestra in concert and in rehearsal,

as well as living together in a commune and doing shifts at the

mystical maestro’s Pharaoh’s Den convenience store – and, of

course, the great man holding forth in cosmically gnomic style

Round Midnight

Bertrand Tavernier, 1986

A tribute to the jazz greats who made Paris their home, sometimes

while looking ruin in the face. Inspired by Lester Young and Bud Powell,

protagonist Dale Turner was played by a real-life titan, tenor great

Dexter Gordon, who received an Academy Award nomination for his

performance. Herbie Hancock scored, while a stellar cast of musicians

includes Wayne Shorter and Freddie Hubbard. French cinema’s

definitive testimony to the national romance with the music.

Momma Don’t Allow
Karel Reisz & Tony Richardson, 1955
One of the foundation stones of British Free Cinema, this 22-minute short
shows trad antics at Wood Green Jazz Club, with the Chris Barber Band
featuring Lonnie Donegan. Years later, Absolute Beginners (Julien Temple,
1985) would be derided for its high-gloss reimagining of the London jazz
scene in its heyday, but with input from Gil Evans and a dazzling fantasia on
Charles Mingus’s ‘Boogie Stop Shuffle’, it’s not to be dismissed.

Sven Klang’s Combo
Stellan Olsson, 1976
Many cinephile jazz lovers swear by this as the real thing. Set in
Sweden in 1958, it’s about a dance band in which power relations shift
when a new sax player tries to modernise the music. A key moment
comes when his solo tears the roof off a cover of ‘Somewhere over
the Rainbow’ – a song also the subject of the best, and saddest, jazz
joke ever, told in Jim Jarmusch’s 1980 debut Permanent Vacation.