Stella nel cielo

Previous comments size this one up pretty well; it has jazz strengths, story weaknesses, and jazz weaknesses.

But it has jazz, so it's obviously better than movies that do not. ;-)

Somewhat surprised there have been no mentions of the film's clearly dismissive treatment of the "symphonic jazz" maestro "Ted Browning", a full-on swipe at a certain real-life caucasian bandleader with an ironic surname who profited handsomely from the music while bringing relatively little to it himself.

But set aside whether the character's model merits the derision; "Ted Browning" seems almost too close to TOD Browning, the name of the director of both Dracula and Freaks, to have been a purely coincidental choice.

That you'd essentially name the bandleader of an orchestra that was clearly depicted as sucking the life from jazz musicians after the director of a vampire movie feels like another small point in favor of this seldom-shown movie.

I came away with a different slant on this film than the other reviews I've seen here, so let me just say that for 1942 this terrific little love note to jazz is remarkably progressive for its day. While it's true that the plot ultimately leads to the white jazz stars of the early '40s, it is true to the roots of jazz and even includes a scene where an adult black musician calls an adult white musician "boy" and it's clear who's teaching who. This movie is as passionate about hot jazz music as were the people who created it, and it shows.

Also, the plot is not as thin as many such films. It has the production values of an "A" picture, and its three stars were not exactly "B" list talent. It sometimes stretches credulity, but no more so than any other musical, and in fact even less so, considering that the music is an inherent part of the story.

Here's hoping TCM shows this again soon; I'd love to record and keep it, as I doubt an official DVD release is in the offing.

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

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.

I suppose a script would need to be twice the length in order to smoothly bring a group of characters out of New Orleans and up the river to Chicago to parallel the development of jazz from the start of the century to World War II. So this one jumps from cliché to cliché (including some well- meaning but dated portrayals of black people) as actors meet and re-meet with a quantity of coincidence that would make Dickens shake his head. The actors sell the situations, though, under Dieterle's sure hand. (And he helps out at one point, in a short fantasy sequence, with a touch of pure old German expressionism.) Not everything is a cliché: there is a stereotype-breaking lady pianist, and there is a bitter attack on punctilious big-band jazz of the Paul Whiteman style-- a little surprising in a movie that celebrates the variety of style and interplay in black, white, southern, and urban traditions. Most of all, though, there is a soundtrack of remarkable music, including a moment that might be the most impressive tour de force by Gene Krupa ever captured on film.