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http://www.jstor.org REVIEWS 53

Throughout the film, we see many images of reflected on the film's rejection by LA's 1979 women whose skills were developed far beyond Filmex, Demetrakas suggested: "It has a kind of their expectations, like the woman who made hun- unpretentious quality . . . some people don't see dreds of perfect tiles for the floor when no tile what it is . . . don't see its universality." company would undertake the job. She then con- From the feature film, Demetrakas takes the fesses, a little embarrassed at seeming to praise length of History, the exceptional quality of its herself, that she did get "a sense of satisfaction" camerawork and editing, and its highly controlled from the job. Or my favorite, the woman who surface. From the documentary, the film gets its struggled against Chicago's insistence on disci- basic stance of detailed, nonfictional investigation pline because, a victim of her own stereotypes, she of something significant in the world, where you thought that focus meant limitation-then she have to be present to catch the accident of the found out that focus means expansion, that intense cracked Dickinson plate or the confrontation be- concentration can take you to the infinite center tween Chicago and the ceramics worker. Demetra- of anything. kas rejects the scientific or educational "objectiv- The film also reveals another important and ity" of the conventional documentary, offering closely related transformation within the world of instead not storyline or fiction, but the personal art itself: the transformation of traditional female vision of the independent filmmaker. Like the crafts such as needlework and china painting into phenomenon it documents, Right Out of History high art, and the expansion of the audience for involves a wide-ranging and original process of such techniques. Such an effort involves breaking generic integration, creating an expanded audi- down some of the art world's most cherished cate- ence for the documentary. gories. In addition, as I suggested earlier, the insis- -BEVERLE HOUSTON tence on vaginal imagery exerts a pressure against convention that some find intolerable. If the world of "legitimate art" is expanded to include these media and images, then the control of the spaces, LASTOF THE BLUE DEVILS materials, and rewards of art-making might also be transformed. Directorand producer: Bruce Ricker. Editor:Thomasin Henkel. 35mm distri- As Chicago remarks early in the film, in one of bution: Lloyd Kohn/Nightfall, 8033 Sunset Blvd., Box 233, Los Angeles its resonances "The Dinner Party" represents an 90046. 16mm: DirectCinema Ltd., Box69589, Los Angeles90069. ironic version of one of the world's most famous tra- ditional images of martyrdom-The Last Supper Like dance film, movies concentrating on per- -but since women are themselves the plates, they formance have often evoked a tension between the are closely linked, not with the consumers, but subject's control over his materials and the film- with the consumed. It is the triumph of the piece maker's formalizing impulses. Until recently, jazz and of Right Out of History to build on this pro- has been ill-served by the movies, a few shorts foundly ironic awareness of violence, not a com- excepted like Gjon Mili'sJammin'the Blues (1944) plaint but a transcendence, a metamorphosis that and Roger Tilton's Jazz Dance (1954) which was is subtle, personal, and successful as art and as shot in part by Richard Leacock. Even in these documentary. films, the directors held the reins tight. Mili iso- Right Out of History has been screened as a lates his artists against big, high-fashion cyclo- feature in the Pacific Film Archive, at theaters in ramas. Tilton accelerates the frenzy of a New York Boston and Houston, and filled the house for two dixieland beer bust with flashy editing. nights of excited audiences in LA where the thea- Alternatively, jazz musicians have momentarily ter has rebooked the film. It almost makes its appeared in the middle of Hollywood features,* booking costs in long runs as well, which is amaz- but for the most part this great music, when docu- ing in the absence of any conventional advertising. * It has been accepted at the London, Berlin, and Although hardly complete, a full rundown on documented Neon (Switzerland) film festivals. It has jazz performances will be found in David Meeker, Jazz in the recently Movies: a Guide to Jazz Musicians 1917-1977 (London: Talis- been bought for broadcasting by the BBC. As we man, 1977). REVIEWS

can still perform, at least occasionally, if there is any work. The chances to preserve an art so inex- tricably linked to individual performance are slip- ping by. No Maps on My Taps (1979) and Tap- dantin' (1980) investigate the world of jazz dance with performers like Honi Coles, Sandman Sims, Bunny Briggs, and John Bubbles. Filmed over a two-year period and featuring surviving black swing musicians, a 1970 venture by Louis and Claudine Pannassie, L'Aventure dujazz, has been little shown. So a further difficulty is one of re- LAST OF THtE E I)DEVII,S couping expenses often incurred in bursts of un- businesslike dedication. mented at all, has been pummeled into fictional- ized "true biographies" or rendered clownish for The world of the aging musician is peopled with the sake of broad appeal. personal memories, past professional associations, Television bears like responsibility for trivializ- a sense of artistic history, and, with luck, con- ing jazz, concentrating largely on big names like tinuing performance. In reflection, film (as con- Ellington and Armstrong or guest-spotting old trasted with television) will now intercut new foot- performers such as Eubie Blake and Alberta Hun- age with early clips, photographs, and voiceover ter. Yet live TV, when pointed at musicians, at reminiscence. A good example is The Last of the least subordinates itself. Unlike the film editor, a Blue Devils, executed by Bruce Ricker, a lawyer, television switcher is time-bound and limited to with dedication, understanding and common available camera positions in documenting a sense. Its title identifies remaining members of a jazz execution which otherwise maintains its own midwest 'twenties and early 'thirties group, what pace and dynamics. Series on PBS such as the was known in that time as a . The current Jazz at the Maintenance Shop and an Blue Devils worked on a "commonwealth plan." earlier Jazz at the Top let artists control their own Matters of personnel, wages, and bookings were repertoires, and sometimes at least they schedule handled by majority vote, profits divided equally. modern performers. In the memories of fans, a Their headquarters was originally Oklahoma City. 1957 CBS program on The Liveliest Arts called Leadership was inherited by , who "" was television's finest hour. played string bass, tuba, and baritone sax. At its Producers Whitney Balliet and Nat Hentoff had peak, the band included , Bill Basie, the good sense simply to situate the likes of Billie , , and , Holiday, , who, with Young, was especially well thought of and Pee Wee Russell in a studio and leave them by young . alone. The film centers on the jazzmen and jazz/blues With the advent of flexible, portable, double- styles of Kansas City. The Blue Devils are an system 16mm equipment, the preservation of jazz appropriate starting point because their early riff performance has occasionally accompanied other arrangements prospered and refined themselves in forms of contemporary documentary. Sometimes later bands of Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk, Harlan these productions even try to catch something of Leonard and Jay McShann, above all in the Count the musicians' lives off the bandstand. British film Basie group. It all became Kansas City Style. The critics Alan Lovell and Paddy Whannel did this Blue Devils' best soloists defected to Kansas City's in Living Jazz (1961) whose subject was Bruce Tur- own Bennie Moten Orchestra in 1929-30, an ner's small band. In Memories of Duke (1980), aggregation inherited by Basie on Moten's death, director Gary Keys combines reminiscences of old a fact blithely unacknowledged in the movie. musicians with a 1968 Ellington tour of Mexico. During Prohibition and the depression, Kansas The pre-bop generations of jazz players are now City was a provincial commercial center for what- dead or very aged, although a surprising number ever wheat and cattle shipped there more easily REVIEWS 55 than north to Chicago. (Blue Devils were wire cut- Little quotations of early jazz film document ters used on the barbed enclosures of cattle some of its nicer moments. The Count does Basie ranches). Under Tom Pendergast, Kansas City was Boogie, featuring himself much more than cus- wide open. The gambling, prostitution and booze tomary, and repeats it with a 1950 small group meant employment in hard times for many mid- that affords momentary glimpses of west musicians, not only jazz-dance groups, but and Wardell Gray. Lester has a chorus on Billy blues and boogie woogie pianists like Pete Johnson Holiday's Fine and Mellow, excerpted from "The and blues shouters, most noteworthily Joe Turner. Sound of Jazz," along with a snippet of Dickie's Together that pair worked the Sunset Club at Dream with a dream band whose sax section, for Eighteenth and Highland, whose manager was instance, contains Young, Hawkins, , Piney Brown. Earl Warren and Harry Carney! Especially for Many of the great Kansas City figures are dead those who never saw him, a high point will be now: Lester Young and Charlie Parker, Lips Page Charlie Parker, playing Hot House with Dizzy Gil- and Walter Page, Bennie Moten, Charlie Chris- lespie. The tune was a anthem, based on tian, Pete Johnson and Jimmy Rushing. The others chords of What is This Thing Called Love? Their are getting on. A young man when he joined the rendition stems from a fifties kinescope of a local Blue Devils, Basie was 73 at the time of this film- New York show on an occasion when Earl Wilson ing. The movie documents such survivors, their presented an award to the pair. Barring photo- music and city, with great success. graphs, it seems to be the only visible Bird in exis- The Last of the Blue Devils opens on a portion tence, although rumors speak of silent footage. of South, Bennie Moten's Victor record success of Except for the Pendergast sequence, white faces 1928, and closes on that band's Moten Swing, are notably absent from The Last of the Blue which is a riffed revamping of You're Driving Me Devils. There is Butch Miles, Basie's drummer Crazy and a kind of KC theme song along with for years, and one can catch an instant of Buddy Piney Brown Blues and the One O'Clock Jump. DeFranco beside Wardell Gray and Clark Terry. Between these old recordings, live performance One club owner, Milton Morris, is interviewed. (filmed in 1974-75) and casual reminiscing inter- He ran the Novelty Club, once boasting a band spersed with photographs and occasional quota- that included Basie, , Lester Young, Lips tions from old black-and-white movie footage. Page and Walter Page-with Ben Webster and If there is a motif to the film it is one of aging Charlie Parker sitting in. Morris applauds the friends preserving other days in memory and per- music and its times. What he does not mention is formance. Episodes are structured around particu- that salaries were $3 a night, and Parker and lar groups or personalities like Young, Parker, Webster worked for free drinks, but such a scale Walter Page and the Pendergast machine. Black was common. Kansas City seems one vast neighborhood, at least Even beyond what is recounted, the film un- by this version, and the musicians have all worked leashes torrents of memories. , re- together, so the same figures reappear throughout. cently deceased, plays Night Train, which he carted Most central are Joe Turner, Jessie Price (Basie's away from Ellington's Happy Go Lucky Local earliest drummer), Bill Basie, Buster Smith, and when he left the Duke's band. , Ernie Williams (Blue Devils drummer, manager, once known as the Vice Prez in deference to Young, "and the runner"). Although originating in Red honks a Lester chorus at its raunchiest. Eddie Bank, New Jersey, Basie is clearly the home town Durham, who pioneered the electric guitar and boy who became famous. Turner ( introduced it to in 1937, plays in Shake, Rattle and Roll days) grew in the a ripping trombone solo which reminds the listener city's red light district, and epitomizes the local that the styles of Dickie Wells and scene. Ailing, Turner sits throughout, but he is were quite as geographic as they were personal said to be in better health today. The live numbers in origin. begin with, "Well I've been to Kansas City/ Boy, Crook Goodwin croons Until the Real Thing and everything is really all right," Turner accom- Comes Along in the tenor ballad style perfected panied by Jay McShann. by Pha Terrill with Andy Kirk and his Clouds of 56 REVIEWS

Joy, still edged slightly with satire of contemporary that this film may be a "masterpiece" of the neo- dance band sentimentalities. White-moustached, realist school of film-making.1 In my view, Olmi appears, a figure out of the past who creates what may well be a new style of film-mak- was Parker's close friend since the days of Jay ing, a "post-neorealism" scrupulously faithful to McShann. One musical highspot is a violin solo the tenets of neorealism but at the same time by Claude Williams, who accompanied Basie's intensely personal. first great band to New York. Tap dancer Speedy The Tree Wooden Huggins reminds the viewer of another rich tradi- of Clogs documents the lives of five families in an Italian not tion with names like Honey Coles, John Bubbles, peasant village, far from at the turn of and Bill Robinson. Jo Jones, who seems to have , the century. The film recalls Olmi's childhood in the been in every first-rate jazz film ever made, con- Bergamo coun- Olmi admits that "the film is tributes one of his inimitable imitations, here tryside. really a story of of Baby Lovett, and then the two duet. No men- my childhood, stories that have long lived in my to be told."2 His in tion is made of a moment, famed in Kansas City memory crying grandmother, had a influence on him: "I legend, when Jones threw his cymbal across the particular, strong spent with a room, enraged at young Charlie Parker's incompe- many years living my grandmother, peasant woman of wisdom scholastic tence during a jam session. great (not wisdom, but the fruit of a life lived with utter One of the most moving sequences follows Ernie clear-sighted- ness). As a I feel a deal of Williams down Kansas City streets, talking about result, great tenderness toward such old his neighborhood and waving to friends in a res- sages."3 The film presents an almost taurant and a barber shop. The final sense one documentary panorama of the work, strug- faith and love of the carries from this film is marked by the affection gles, peasant people. The Tree shared among these aging musicians whose warmth of Wooden Clogs is Olmi's ninth fea- ture film in 20 is genuine regardless of success or failure. These years of writing and directing and it shares traits with his men lived through great times and preserved pre- many earlier work. But it also a cious feelings in order to impart them, while en- represents significant evolution. Its docu- during the cruel American entertainment business. mentary aspect can be traced to Olmi's beginnings as an One of their most-repeated observations is that industrial film-maker: "I began by taking of and some friend, now gone, was "a warm, good man." pictures objects people sheerly for the love The movie could not have been made unless such of them. Shooting these pictures also was a way of closer to emotions were shared among film-makers and coming the world of work that I shared with performers. -JOHN FELL my colleagues. Then I started making docu- mentaries.4 Between 1953 and 1961 Olmi made 40 documentary films, and his first dramatic feature, Time Stood Still (1959), was an expanded version THETREE OF WOODEN CLOGS of a documentary project. His earliest feature films, like his latest one, (L'Albero degli zoccoli) Written, directed, and photographed by Olmanno graphically depict working-class life. Time Stood Olmi.New YorkerFilms. Still, The Sound of Trumpets (1961), and (1962) all deal with working-class people L Albero degli Zoccoli (The Tree of Wooden Clogs) in contemporary society. Shot with a stark sim- is a 185-minute feature film written, directed, plicity, these films, like The Tree of Wooden Clogs, photographed and edited by the Italian director pay careful attention to physical details and com- . When it premiered at Cannes, plete naturalness of performance, utilize deep- critical opinion was unanimously favorable and it focus and a hand-held camera, and avoid conven- won the coveted Golden Palm Award. But the tional narrative structure in favor of a low-key, film's release in the United States met with a mixed episodic flow which presents key moments in the reception from critics who generally fell into two lives of the characters. The themes Olmi deals with camps: those who objected strongly to its lack of in these earlier films include personal freedom, conventional dramatic appeal, and those who, for- maturity, human responsibility, the meaning of giving the absence of convention, have concluded love.