It’s the Summer Jazz Festival in Poznań, if you can call a handful of performances spread over the summer a festival. That included a free screening of the 1960s Polish film Niewinni Czarodzieje.
Who doesn’t appreciate seeing a black and white picture on the big screen these days? Especially at a late Summer night outdoor space. And better yet, a Jazz picture, or more accurately, Jazz in the supporting cast: a Krzysztof Komeda Jazz score, a brief Jazz act, and much of what you might call the dynamic: improvisation, dissonance, tension-resolution, swing, if I may pull abstract elements out of a hat and apply across character interplay willy nilly.
Can’t otherwise recall many decent features with Jazz in the spotlight, known both for their authenticity and engaging narrative.
Bird and Round Midnight? Alright, but nothing I’d care to rewatch. New York, New York I’d not seen. Nor Sweet and Lowdown. The more recent Whiplash, although not without authenticity issues, compensates with the cough-your-lungs-out theatrics. In La La Land, the pseudo-jazz-musical, by that same director, I derived a reverse dichotomy interestingly enough: far more engaging Jazz aspects over the overall dramatic development.
But it’s a different story with the supporting cast. Appealing to memory:
Naked Lunch - the David Cronenberg pseudo adaptation of the William Burroughs novel, leverages Ornette Coleman’s chaotic, eastern influenced Midnight Sunrise. Whatever the numerous merits behind the sensationalist surreal film that I can only watch once in a Picasso’s blue moon, the Coleman track, however sparsely involved, solidifies it for me. Can’t since but regard Naked Lunch but through a Jazz lens.
During the anime phase of my existence, the Cowboy Bebop eclectic Jazz soundtrack blew me away like some Japanese wind demon a flock of berserk hogs across a thundery landscape. Like the case above, it’s now the immediately associable image: for the earlier part of the series, anyhow. It’s been a long while, but from what I recall, these classic anime are notoriously prone to plunge into too much somberness, in the prospect of which even Jazz throws in the towel.
Collateral - a stellar early exponent of digital film-making and a feast for the eyes, Jazz dynamic too receives some attention. But come the Jazz Club scene with Miles Davis' Spanish Key, and the picture joins the Jazz cohort.
Birdman, the sensational pseudo-theatrical production in the rare semblance of a continuous montage, employs pure Jazz percussion to a great extent.
Swing Kids, the 90s portrayal of the subversive contingent during the Third Reich, counterpoises the authoritarianism with solid Swing dancing, an important Jazz antecedent.
In the more recent Miles Ahead with Don Cheadle in the lead, worth mentioning is the On the Corner inclusion for the score, one of my favourite albums, period, this anticipatory African influenced funk, percussion, ‘black music’ as Miles Davis referred to it, or call it what you will.
Convention challenging Jazz scores: they elevate films to laureate heights.
Niewinni Czarodzieje, however, employed the typical for the period Hard Bop. Okay for the sheer enjoyment. But I still prefer the avantgarde developments, particularly of the 60s/70s. More on that.
Questions, comments? Connect.