Round Midnight (Widescreen)

If Turner's frail character echoes real-life ex-pats like Bud Powell and Lester Young, director Bertrand Tavernier's insistence upon casting the role with veteran tenor player Dexter Gordon breathes startling authenticity into the figure. Gordon's own drug arrests and an extended idyll abroad give him direct access to Turner's isolation, and Tavernier elicits a natural but compelling performance that earned Gordon (who died in 1990) an Academy Award nomination. Likewise, the director cast his cinematic band with world-class musicians, including Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter, and shot these sequences as live performances. Hancock's score deservedly won both British and American Academy Awards, as well as a French César. --Sam Sutherland

It's a loving recreation of Paris in the 1950s when many of the best American jazz musicians liked to hang in and around the Blue Note café, a venue which, if I only had a time machine is probably where I would most want to spend my evenings. There we find Dale Turner (Gordon) who is in France playing his tenor and drinking himself to death. Turner is based on a kind of amalgam of Bud Powell and Lester Young. His self-destructiveness and bizarre speech habits (all his male friends are nicknamed "Lady" something or other) are pureYoung. The friendship with a young Frenchman Francis (Francois Cluzet) with forms the film's dramatic centre is based on an episode in the life of Powell.

Cluzet's character is perhaps one of the weaker aspects of the film. His conversations with Turner are a bit unsuccessful in getting very far past fanspeak, You are so wonderful, I love your music so much, etc., etc., which I confess I started finding a little tiresome. But generally it's a really delightful movie and one it is possible to enjoy even if you aren't a jazz nut.

But the music is certainly a huge treat. The scene where Gordon and Lonette McKee's Darcey Leigh (clearly based on Billie Holiday) perform "How Long Has This Been Going On" is one of the most unforgettable and mesmerizing musical moments in any film.

Music aside, it's a rather quiet, low key drama about how Turner befriends Francis and his young daughter who must then struggle to help him control the drink habit which is inexorably killing him. It's fairly slow moving. Not a lot happens. But it's a touching and likeable movie, slow and tender like much of its soundtrack, and is kept interesting mainly by Dexter Gordon's marvellous performance as Turner, a heartbreaking mixture of poetry and kindness on the one hand and hopeless alcoholic desperation on the other. He acts almost as well as he plays and he plays, well, he plays like Dexter Gordon.


Jazz anyone?   June 17, 2003
Being a sax player, I was completely sucked in. It's one
of my favorites. It's a slow-paced movie, but the acting is
exellent and it's very real.


Music is love   October 21, 2002
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
This film tells us the story of the last years of Saxophonist Dale Turner. He is killing himself little by little with alcohol, though he has retained his music. He is under the strict surveillance from a woman, Buttercup, who locks him up to prevent him from running away to a bar. He is regenerated by a fan of his, a French graphic artist who takes him to his home, and his young daughter and integrates him in his family. Dale promises to stop drinking and he does. He recaptures his capability to compose music and finds a new life and youth in this late period of his life. He goes back to New York where he is received very favorably, but he can't stay there because New York is full of bad recollections and he feels it lacks some human atmosphere. So he goes back to Paris but life is never forever and he passes away one night, just like going to sleep a little bit too long. A very sensitive and emotional film in many ways. Tavernier directs it with tact and taste. The Paris of the 50s-60s is perfectly recreated, without its cars and with people in the streets that care for what is happening around them. He avoids emotions for the sake of emotions and builds up some deeply thought and felt situations. It is a lesson in generosity, respect and love for music.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan