Jazz, love, death -- 45 years back -- in Kasper Collin's documentary I CALLED HIM MORGAN

It's odd, but somehow quite fitting, that the fellow we learn least about in Kasper Collin's fine documentary, I CALLED HIM MORGAN, is the title character, a jazz trumpeter named Lee Morgan. We hear his music and can easily determine how talented he was (very) but his character, his personality, his quirks and all the rest are barely there. Instead, we come much closer to the two important women in Morgan's life: Judith Johnson, still alive, who fills us in on her role as the "other woman," and Helen Morgan, Lee's common-law wife, who rescued the drug-addicted guy from the gutter, nourished him, loved him, and then shot him dead. (If you're expecting "The Helen Morgan Story," you'll be getting something quite different from those starring Polly Bergen or Ann Blyth.)

Mr. Collin, the Swedish filmmaker pictured at right, has done plenty of homework here, and the result is a smart and generous array of history, memory (provided by those two women and Lee Morgan's friends and co-musicians), and some terrific archival film and photography -- all of it set to music featuring Morgan (shown below, left), his own band and that of Dizzy Gillespie, with whom Morgan began his career. All of this makes the movie a must for jazz lovers, and for anyone who might want to take a time trip back to the the USA, the South, and then New York City in the 1960s and 70s.

The manner in which the film incorporates its music is particularly lovely: It is used in a way that the best movie soundtracks do in order to highlight emotions and events yet still manages to stay true to itself as jazz. (Interestingly enough, both Lee Morgan and Miles Davis did not appreciate the appellation of jazz to the kind of music either of them wrote and performed.)

As the movie tells its story -- which is based mostly on the only known interview that Helen Morgan ever gave after her prison term to journalist/teacher Larry Reni Thomas in 1996, as well as another with Val Wilmer in Helen's Bronx apartment back in 1971 -- we learn of Helen's life as child: given up by her mother to be raised by her grandparents, then leaving at a very young age for the "big city."

That city was, first, Wilmington, North Carolina, and then finally New York.

We learn of Helen's cooking skills, her detestation at being photographed (hence the paucity of shots of her here!), and finally of how she met, bonded with and saved Lee, after his descent into drugs. In the course of it all, we are also made acquainted with the culture of the time, and black music experience, and the black experience in general. And of course the casual, embedded racism of the day: Even in a snowstorm, how could it have taken a New York City ambulance one full hour to arrive at the scene of the shooting?

A sad story filled with wonderful music, I Called Him Morgan highlights, among other things, black male patriarchy vs strong black women, and the difficulty with which those women had to negotiate their route in life. After being released from prison, Helen -- never a religious person -- finds what salvation she can by working with and helping her local church in Wilmington, North Carolina.

From FilmRise and Submarine Deluxe, the documentary opens tomorrow, Friday, March 24,  in New York City at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and on Friday, March 31, at NYC's Metrograph and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Monica Film Center and elsewhere. Click here to view all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed.

ORNETTE: Made in America--Shirley Clarke's experimental look at an experimental jazz musician

To watch Shirley Clarke's ORNETTE: Made in America today, some 27 years after its debut at the 1985 TIFF, is to realize just how experimental a filmmaker Clarke really was. Much of what we see on screen is what many new documentaries are now doing -- over a quarter of a century later. Using no narration as such (the press material tells us that the filmmaker used Coleman's symphony Skies of America as her underlying script, but this does not really compute: narrative can be verbal, even visual, but symphonic is a bit of a stretch), Clarke simply drops us into things and we begin to learn about this musician, his life and his music -- on the fly, as it were.

Ms Clarke, shown at left, was quite a woman, and this is now the second of her films, after The Connection, to be restored and released via Milestone Films and the ongoing Project Shirley. Its subject, the American jazz great Ornette Coleman, is still with us, even though Clarke died, a victim of Alzheimer's, in 1997. Her movie melds, among other things, present and past, dream and reality, fathers and sons, full orchestra and jazz band into a portrait that turns out to be not really one of the man or of his music but a kind of kaleidoscope vision of creativity and life as it emanates from the very odd personage of Coleman himself.

I wish we could have heard, really heard, more of Ornette's music here. Even though we're given quite a bit of it during the film, Clark's visuals, in several scenes, at least -- insistent, preening, all over the place -- prevent us from concentrating on the music in any serious way. The filmmaker was probably trying to find a visual equivalent to Coleman's work, but if anything some of these visuals obfuscate more than they render clear.

As for Coleman himself, you certainly don't come away from the movie saying, "Whoa -- now I really know this guy (or his music)!" But rather, "What a strange and interesting fellow he seems to be, what a life he probably led, and how I'd like to hear more of his music." In its way, it's kind of an appropriate, if weird, introduction to the musician because it allows you to experience how very strange he and his music are. (Other jazz musicians are said to have simply walked off the stage whenever Coleman would appear on it.) Simply listening to the fellow's little riff on castration/circumcision and man/male will probably rattle your brain bizarrely for some time to come.

Clarke concentrates on the movie's singular "event": a performance of Coleman's symphony to open the new cultural center in Fort Worth (the musician's home town), Caravan of Dreams. Clarke uses the orchestral part of the score more heavily, I think, that she does the Jazz Band's contribution, and she uses this as underscoring for the tale she tells. (The orchestra and the band, at least as shown here, though sharing the same stage seem oddly un-integrated both in terms of the music we hear and what we see: the band is black, the orchestra white.) All this makes for interesting, non-linear storytelling that, back when the film was first released, might have proven a little difficult for audiences to follow. Today, after all the changes we've seen to the documentary form, her film looks surpri-singly contemporary but perhaps now not so hard to keep up with.

Some of the famous people who enter the film and Coleman's life include William Burroughs (above, center), Buckminster Fuller, and George Russell, a composer and professor at the New England Conservatory of Music. The last has this to say a propos Coleman's work: "The West has always thought of music as entertainment. It doesn't understand how it also can contribute ideas & philosophy."

What proves most difficult about the movie are some of Clarke's would-be snazzy visuals and editing techniques (occurring particularly heavily in the Buckminster Fuller section). These are jumpy, repetitive and tiresome and do nothing for one's enjoyment or understanding. They don't even properly reflect Coleman's music, syncopated as it is. They simply call attention to themselves, so we wait until the filmmaker has gotten this out of her system. Fortunately, it doesn't take too long.

What the movie might do is send viewers out to look for and listen to this musician's work. Unlike most of the Clarke oeuvre, this documentary is also more modern in that it lasts only 78 minutes, just about a half-hour shorter than much of her full-length work. Given the style in which she has chosen to present the film, this shorter running time seems appropriate. Ornette: Made in America opens tomorrow, Friday August 31, here in New York City at the IFC Center.

THE CONNECTION: Shirley Clarke's grubby classic returns to sport spiffy, silvery sheen

Milestone has done it again. The company that keeps turning out major restorations, with the help of the UCLA Film & Television Archive, of major (or minor, depending on how you view them) works of cinema -- from Araya to Rogosin, The Exiles to The Edge of the World -- has a new one opening tomorrow in New York City, fifty years from the time it first appeared, only to be shut down by the New York City Police Department. At the time of its debut in October of 1962, THE CONNECTION, directed by Shirley Clarke, from the stage play by Jack Gelber, was already a cause célèbre. Back in those days, the play itself was considered raw and real -- too raw and real for the more popular, affordable and accessible entertainment offered by the movies. (This was prior to the creation of our current and ever-ridiculous ratings board.)

At the time of the film's initial release TrustMovies was a very young man who had arrived in New York the month previous to begin drama school. He missed opening day and didn't see the film until it was once again allowed to be shown, at which point, that "raw and real" subject mater -- a group of junkies, including some fine jazz musicians, sitting around a dilapidated cold-water flat waiting for a fix from their connection who, unlike Godot, really does show up to service the guys -- did indeed seem shocking and much more frank than anything he had seen up until then. That's about all he remembers of the film -- except that the print did not seem particularly good. Certainly nothing like the gorgeous one we saw at the press screening of The Connection at the IFC Center, where the film opens this Friday, May 4th. (Is that even possible? That today's restoration might look better than the film projected at the time of the initial release?) The dismal apartment that is the set of the film still looks like shit, but the film itself -- all silvery sheen and so many lustrous shades of grey that you want to lick them off the screen -- is a jewel.

Are we now so carelessly used to watching DVDs at home and digital projection in theaters that we can be so easily shocked into renewed appreciation by something this beautiful? (This restoration is up there with the best of them -- like Rogosin's On The Bowery.) Past the film beauty on display, however, The Connection, as is true of a number of these restored films, has not been treated kindly by the passing of time. Gelber's play and Clarke's film of it is a kind of play-within-a-play/movie-within-a-movie that posits a filmmaker/journalist (William Redfield, above) and his crew making a documentary about these guys and their "habits."

What may have seemed like stark realism in the 1960s comes off now as not a little pompous and "arty." And Gelber's writing, which again, seemed so honest and pointed at the time can sound awfully "theatrical" now, with some of the more "dramatic" moments resounding as the least real. The apartment's owner, Leach (played by a terrific William Finnerty, above) is afflicted with a boil on his neck that pains him no end. It's a very theatrical boil, however, and the actor is often referencing it to huge dramatic effect. Just when we're thinking, "Will somebody please pop the damn thing so we and this poor actor can move on!", somebody does, and we do.

Fortunately, four of the junkies are musicians, so we get a nice dose of jazz (a form of music I appreciate much more now than when I first saw the film). Nearly half the cast is black, and though civil rights had barely begun to make its mark in our country by 1962, you can feel the shimmering beginnings in this film. Gelber, Clarke and the cast show us how things were, with just a hint of what's to come. The strongest character in the play/film is Cowboy (played by Carl Lee, below), the titular connection who provides a little bit of heaven -- drug-wise -- along with philosophy, strength and cynicism for his crew.

Clarke put together a grand crew of her own to man the film, with some movie greats doing great work. Arthur J. Ornitz (Serpico) was cinematographer, Albert Brenner (The Pawnbroker, The Hustler) did the art direction, and Richard Sylbert (with dozens of classic films to his credit) handled the production design. The still below gives you a sense of what was achieved by these three.

For her part Clarke has Ornitz's camera constantly prowling the apartment; she's seldom still, and her movement keeps us enrapt. At 103 minutes, the film still feels a tad too long for what it has to say. Yet, in its way, it is so visually stunning, I don't think you'll mind sitting, listening and looking. Then, too, there's all that jazz.

As I noted above, The Connection, from Milestone Films, opens Friday, May 4, at the IFC Center in New York City (and elsewhere, I hope?) -- with a promise of the institutional DVD and home DVD release available this coming winter, 2013.

GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH hits theaters. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Perhaps one must be a jazz-lover to best appreciate the film finally making its theatrical debut this week, GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH -- one of those movies which, for the past year or so, was said to be among the as-yet unreleased films that most deserved the chance to be seen. Well, it's here at last, and we can judge for ourselves. When TrustMovies heard that G&M on a PB was a musical, to boot, he became extremely excited, as visions of something Jacques Demy-ish began to dance in his head. 'Fraid not, folks. To TM's taste, this is one of the biggest yawns of the movie year.

I'll go back to that jazz-lover reference above, which I suspect may have to do with how resistible I find this film.  I've never "cottened" much to jazz in its purer form, maybe because it is too improvisational for my taste, too off-the-cuff, raw, even sloppy. The film's lead character, Guy, played by Jason Palmer, is an up-and-coming jazz musician, and the film's director's (Damien Chazelle, shown at left) must have a huge love for this musical genre, for his entire film has a looseness and improvisational feel that smacks of jazz.

My biggest problem with G&M on a PB is that I didn't care a fig for any of its lead characters. There are three of these: Guy, his early and later girlfriend Madeline (Desiree Garcia), and another girl (Sandha Khin, shown below) who inserts herself into Guy's life for a time. They seem to spend most of the movie on automatic pilot, moving from event to event without much interest and little dedication. This may very well be believable in "real life" but it can be deadly to movies, and it certainly is here, unless you're willing to fill in all the blanks -- performance, dialog, even direction -- yourself.

The music may provide the biggest clue to how the fillm is perceived. I found it ordinary to a fault. But for all I know it may be great "jazz." At the finale, one character plays a song to another. What are we to think of this, my companion and I wondered?  Is it supposed to be good? Bad? Indifferent? And what does this mean?  Does either character involved care? And how are we to tell -- since the actors on view seem to prefer the inexpressive mode?

Throughout, the music seems paltry, and the musical "numbers" tiresome. The one big song-and-dance piece set in a restaurant is near embarrassing in its amateurish look, feel and sound. This sort of thing has been done so much better (Demy, again) that, in the case of this particular song, my non-appreciation for jazz does not even come into play.

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is unusual enough, however, that I must suggest you think twice before pasing it up. My predilections may be blinding me to its low-key "brilliance," though I doubt this. I suspect this movie tends to divide audiences rather thoroughly, and in fact, this is what one of its publicists conveyed to me. So unless you find yourself fully agreeing with much that I've said, give it a chance and see what you think. Just don't say I didn't warn you. (There are some lovely visuals -- the photography's in black-and-white -- scattered throughout the film: See one of these, below.)

G&M on a PB&J  -- no, no -- just a PB -- from Variance Films, opens Friday at the Cinema Village in New York City.  And perhaps elsewhere, eventually.

(All photos are from the film itself, except that of Mr. Chazelle, which is by Jennifer Taylor for The Boston Globe)