Bix

Bix was filmed almost entirely on location in Davenport in 1991. The filmmakers, Pupi and Antonio Avati, are huge fans of Beiderbecke's music, and came to Iowa to make Pupi's dream film about Bix's life. The brothers even bought the family home in Davenport and owned it for many years after the filming. I am not sure about the status of the home now.

Most of the actors were cast from an open, cattle-call audition in the Quad-City area. A few exceptions included Bryant Weeks, who was a professional stage actor in Chicago at the time. I haven't seen him since. That might explain why most of the cast is uncredited. The Avatis wanted to use real people from the town where they were making the film. Because of the way credits work in Italian films, most of them did not receive a credit.

The film was edited oddly. It jumped around a great deal through Bix's life, making it difficult to understand the chronological details. However, Weeks delivers a gentle performance and the cinematography is beautiful. The sentimentality, paired with original scores of Bix's music, makes it worth seeing.

I have one good line in it too..

While this film is wonderful at capturing the look of the "Jazz Age" it falls short on the script side. The performances are uneven and average at best and the story is close to incomprehensible at times - as well as fairly inaccurate re: Bix. I really wanted to like this film, but instead I found it to be long and boring. The music, on the other hand, is fantastic.

This is a wonderful film in my light as it shows the true roaring 20's in full glory. It clearly depicts Beiderbeckes life and experiences, the viewer get's into the film. For some it may be hard to watch, as the entire film is a flashback from one of Bix's friends, and the flashbacks don't take a chronological order. If you miss the date and time, that are presented on the bottom of the screen from time to time, you can get lost easily. This movie hit home with me as Beiderbeckes music is not recognized by many, and probably never will be. Go rent this movie. In the words of Louis Armstrong, "Ain't none of them play like him yet."

Avati seized on the life story of Bix Beiderbecke and filtered it through his unique interpretation and then mangled facts to serve this fictional view. The movie is interesting in as much as it is a rare insight into this side of the roaring twenties and the fascinating story of Bix Beiderbecke's meteoric rise and fall. But despite being plainly shown the fundamental inaccuracies in the script, Avati chose to inject wholly fictional scenes. These were not merely the normal adjustments to make the movie move smoothly and advance the plot, but fundamental distortions of the record. Thus, it is sad that this movie, which had the potential to really stand as the definitive work on Bix Beiderbecke, whose true life has more than enough elements to make a great movie, instead stands as yet another distorted vision.

Although the timeline can be a bit confusing, this is a beautiful peek into the hot jazz age and the true life characters who lived it.The music scenes are the best ever filmed of this era. No closer representation can be found of Bix and these legends at work. The cast is great and Mark Sovel steals the show with his sublime and witty portrayal of sax legend Frankie Trumbaeur. There are some flat points but overall one must be awed by life as it was in the 1920s.