Syncopation

George Latimer (Adolphe Menjou) and his daughter Kit (Bonita Granville) live in New Orleans, the city of jazz. Unfortunately, the family business is not doing well and has to relocate to Chicago. Kit is heartbroken, but she agrees to the move with the promise that they will return someday. As she gets older, she never loses her love of jazz and plays it whenever she gets a chance. One night, she goes for a walk and comes across Johnny Schumacher (Jackie Cooper), a down and out musician. He takes her to a party where they play a new variation on New Orleans jazz and she brings down the house with her piano-playing. Her confidence gives Johnny a new outlook on his love for music, although money is always a temptation.

Syncopation could have been much better, but it constantly strays from the fact that jazz music came from the black community. It begins with black people, one of the rare opportunities in classic films for black actors to shine, but that quickly disappears in favor of the white stars. Noteworthy players are Todd Duncan as trumpet-player Rex Tearbone and Jessica Grayson as his mother. The movie becomes a bit of a cliché with the actors struggling against all odds only to inspire the greats like Benny Goodman and Harry James. Unfortunately black musicians like Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Duke Ellington are left out of the grand finale.

As it stands, Syncopation is an entertaining movie with lots of great music, but it is simply average overall. It never sticks to a time period, but what it lacks in accuracy, it makes up for with catchy tunes and praise-worthy leading actors. Granville is dazzlingly beautiful throughout the movie and she and real-life boyfriend Cooper work well together on-screen.

Syncopation (1942)

** (out of 4)

Well-meaning but ultimately flat tale trying to teach Americans why "black music" is so important. Our film follows three people throughout a twenty-plus year period as George Latimer (Adolphe Menjou) sees his daughter (Bonita Granville) want to play music herself and she gets her chance when she meets a young man (Jackie Cooper) who wants to put a band together. This film starts off on a very weird note with the strangest credits I've ever seen. We get a quick glimpse of slaves being taken from Africa to America and then we get the credits, which simply introduce the "people in front of the camera" and then we see another group of names followed by "people behind the camera." Why they decided to do this I'm not certain but it was quite strange. SYNCOPATION offers up quite a bit of good including the music, which features Jack Jenney, Joe Venuti, Harry James, Benny Goodman and Charlie Barnet among others. The soundtrack to the film features some popular tunes and these here certainly help keep the viewer interested in everything that is going on. Another plus are the three lead performances, which are all pretty good. I thought Granville and Cooper had some nice chemistry together and even though it's obviously not them playing the instruments, I thought both of them sold it quite well. The biggest problem with this film is that it tries to hard to tell people that Jazz isn't evil. I thought the film was a bit too preachy about it at times and at other times it's almost like the filmmakers are trying to beat the viewer over the head. Another problem is that the story of this couple going through various eras of music just never really works as it just feels forced and there's not much holding it together. The film certainly means well and it's portrait of blacks is certainly a lot more positive than the majority of films from this period.

From the opening scene of African drums and images of the Atlantic slave trade, you know this is not going to be a conventional Hollywood production. The scene switches to New Orleans in 1906, and the movie becomes a paean to the city's black residents, their religiosity and creativity, clearly credited with the origins of jazz. Covering the evolution of ragtime, blues, jazz, swing, and boogie woogie through prohibition, the stock-market crash, the Great Depression, and the outbreak of World War II the story is told through a romance in which the characters, played by Bonita Granville and Jackie Cooper argue over the need to stay true to their musical roots and the need to make money and popularize the new musical styles. Meanwhile, she bangs out tunes on the piano and he toots his heart out on the trumpet. The credits don't seem to indicate who is dubbing whom, but the final scene showcases some of the finest musicians of the 1940s. Prior to the making of the film, RKO studio held a contest for the readers of the Saturday Evening Post to vote on the musicians they would choose to make up an All-American Dance Band. The result is a pseudo jam session with Charlie Barnet, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Jack Jenney, Gene Krupa, Alvino Rey, and Joe Venuti. Singer Connee Boswell also makes an appearance in the film with her rendition of "Under a Falling Star." "Syncopation" is not a musical where people burst into song for no apparent reason; the music is carefully integrated into the story. Some of its content was daring for the time-friendships between white and black musicians, for example. In one scene, an admiring Jackie Cooper says to Todd Duncan, "You fellas are terrific," to which Duncan replies, "Thanks, boy." You can bet that in apartheid America that line kept the movie out of a lot of theaters. Among the other surprises in this film: an astounding apache dance, quotes from Walt Whitman's poetry, and a stunning performance by Jessica Grayson as the long suffering nanny. ---from Musicals on the Silver Screen, American Library Association, 2013

The merits of this picture lay rather in the execution of the great jazz scores than the plot itself - lacking and predictable. Starting by a little chronicle about the jazz development from its African roots till its further evolving into New Orleans and Chicago style, the story approaches the career's flourish of a young trumpeter Cooper, who falls for a "stride" piano player during the Great War. The movie also portrays the prejudice of higher classes against jazz valued as a 'vulgar' genre. A movie that certainly will apply the classic jazz lovers, with locations in Basin street and, at the end, a very special featuring of the most hot jazz players of early 40's as Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet, Gene Krupa, Harry James, Jack Jenny, Joe Venuti, and Alvino Rey, not forgetting the special appearance of Connie Boswell singing "under a falling star". As against another movies as "Alfie", "anatomy of murder" or "Ball of fire" which conciliate good scripts with good music (Sonnie Rollins, Duke Ellington and Roy Eldridge respectively),Syncopation, even unprovided of a consistent story, still is a delicious option in order to evoke one of the most fruitful music period in this century.

This movie definitely gets points for:

1) its general love for the music and mood of New Orleans 2) the great jazz/blues score 3) and most particularly its view of African/Americans as musicians and maids which sounds bad until you consider that, in 1942 in Hollywood, it was pretty much maids period. With an occasional train porter thrown in for variety.

The movie gets points taken away for:

1) The flat, corny, pseudo poetic dialogue (expected more from Phil Yordan who penned the noir classic ,"The Big Combo" and the fine, dark western, "Day Of The Outlaw") 2) The general saccharininity (how's that for a new word?) of Bonita Granville 3) most especially that horrible final montage of jazz/blues immortals all of whom are white (what? Satchmo didn't make the cut? In a film about friggin New Orleans? Shameful)

When the dust settles, give it a C plus.