telenous
Well-known
In 1960, photographer Bert Stern made a concert documentary called "Jazz on a Summer's Day". This was to be Stern's only film but it was one that defined concert documentaries ever since.
I watched a snippet of the film ages ago (the career-making Anita O'Day performance) and I sorta looked for it as I was wasting time on youtube the other day. Then I found a link and watched the film in its entirety, and what a marvelous discovery it was.
Here's an excerpt from a critical notice
"...Jazz on a Summer's Day has been called a "snapshot of a day in Eisenhower's America," though that designation suggests artlessness; another critic compared the film to Robert Frank's Americans, an influential photographic suite of life in the USA in the 1950's. The America's Cup trials happened to be going on off Newport on that summer Saturday in 1958, and Stern's camera watches the audiences watching the boats, as well as watching the music. Stern's glimpses of the crowd creates momentary but unforgettable characters in the passing scene. His soft-spoken, observational camera and plein-air shooting style give the film a lightness of being that is the perfect visual correlative of the cool jazz greats of the day, like Mulligan. This is Degas at the races, in 4/4 time... " (Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University)
(The rest can be found here: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fnf05n1.html )
and a link to the film itself: http://vimeo.com/35807953
Heartily recommended.
.
I watched a snippet of the film ages ago (the career-making Anita O'Day performance) and I sorta looked for it as I was wasting time on youtube the other day. Then I found a link and watched the film in its entirety, and what a marvelous discovery it was.
Here's an excerpt from a critical notice
"...Jazz on a Summer's Day has been called a "snapshot of a day in Eisenhower's America," though that designation suggests artlessness; another critic compared the film to Robert Frank's Americans, an influential photographic suite of life in the USA in the 1950's. The America's Cup trials happened to be going on off Newport on that summer Saturday in 1958, and Stern's camera watches the audiences watching the boats, as well as watching the music. Stern's glimpses of the crowd creates momentary but unforgettable characters in the passing scene. His soft-spoken, observational camera and plein-air shooting style give the film a lightness of being that is the perfect visual correlative of the cool jazz greats of the day, like Mulligan. This is Degas at the races, in 4/4 time... " (Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University)
(The rest can be found here: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fnf05n1.html )
and a link to the film itself: http://vimeo.com/35807953
Heartily recommended.
.