The Cinema and the Jazz married with the first sonorous film of the history of the cinema, the documentary “The Singer Jazz”,
( Al Jolson 1927). Soon it would come: Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington, in Paris Blues and Lena Horne with Fat Waller and others in Stormy Weather. Soon it would come: cabin in the sky (1943). Of Director Vincente Minnelli, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and his
orchestra.
Best foot forward (1943). Directed by Edward Buzzell; Lucille Ball, William Gazton, Virginia Weidler, Tommy Dix, Nancy Walker where the Harry James´ orchestra is touching “Two O''Clock Jump”. In fact, in the beginnings of the sonorous cinema, their presences were, musically irrelevant, since in the Thirties and forty, the cinema studies used the jazz only in the
musical comedy. The jazz took refuge in the clubs and the radio transmitters from where they spread to all EE.UU. But it would be in the French cinema where the jazz first makes use of significant form as a dramatic bottom of films inside the atmosphere of the “Nouvelle Vague”. The paradigm of that historical change of roll, between the cinema and the jazz, was without a doubt the extraordinary film and better sound track: “Ascenseur pour L''échafaud” of Louis Malle (1957) and whose recording was made while the brilliant trumpeter of jazz Miles Davis watches the film.
Anatomy of a murder (1959) of the director Otto Preminger is Performed by James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O''Connell and George C. Scott is perhaps the best film of this list. It includes here the excellent performance of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra.
Many years later Terence Blanchard included the main subject in a wonderful album on the Jazz in the cinema. In any case, the presence of the jazz in the cinema in general, and in the North American particularly, does not correspond absolutely with the influence and the prestige of this music. Only a little number of good films has been rolled to give prestige and importance to the jazz, without the tape suffering. Although the fundamental thing, is that the cinematographic industry in the Sixties, it finished assuming the music of jazz like a circumstantial element with the cinema, and that composers coming from the jazz (Henry Mancini, Johnny Mandel, Lalo Shifrin, Quincy Jones or Dave Grusin) would professionalize themselves in the composition of music for the cinema. At the moment the Jazz and the Cinema, march together, with the inestimable collaboration of enormous cinema directors and producers, who simultaneously were and are, great fans to the jazz. Thus: Bertrand Tavernier with its splendid production “''Round Midnight”, (1986) or Clint Eastwood with his powerful “Bird” (1988), Francis Ford Coppola with “Cotton Club” (1984) or already more close Robert Altman, with “Kansas Agreed City” (1996) and Woody Allen with “In accord and Discords” (1999). The inclusion of jazz songs in cinema, theater and television, has been very generous. For example,” Body and Soul”, of Johnny Green, is considered by the connoisseurs the number 1 of the Standard Jazz.
In the cinema: Stormy Weather (1943) Broadway Rhythm (1944, The Hazel Scott Trio) The Man I Love (1946, Ida Lupino) Body and Soul (1947) The Helen Morgan Story (1957, Ann Blyth) They Shoot Horses, Don''t They? (1969) Stardust Memories (1980, Django Reinhardt) Pop American (1981) The Color Purple (1985) Round Mi/B> (1986, Dexter Gordon) Radio Days (1987, Benny Goodman Trio) Torch Song Trilogy (1988, Charles Haden Quartet West) I Hired to Contract Killer (1990) In Kaerlighedhistorie (2001, Sven Wolter, Peaches Latrice Petersen) Catch Me If You Dog (2002).
In the theater: Three''s to Crowd (1930, Libby Holman) musical Broadway Body and Soul (1988) musical Munich Black and Blue (1989, Ruth Brown) Broadway revue.
In television: Edderkoppen (2000, Katrineish.
Mini series TV: Sex and the City (2002, Billie Holiday), HBO TV series, Season 4, Episode 65,
"A ''Vogue'' Idea"