As my last tribute to jazz for today, I want to share with you, friends, a film I like
very much: Round Midnight.
“Round Midnight is a 1986 film directed by Bertrand
Tavernier and written by David Rayfiel and Bertrand
Tavernier.
It tells the story of an African
American tenor
saxophone player in Paris in the 1950s who is befriended
by an unsuccessful French graphic designer who idolizes
the musician and who tries desperately to help him to escape alcohol abuse. The protagonist jazzman,
"Dale Turner," was based on a composite of real-life jazz legends Lester Young (tenor sax) and the tortured
and enigmatic Bud Powell (piano). While the film is
fictionalized, it is drawn directly from the memoir/biographyDance of the
Infidels written by Francis Paudras, who had befriended Powell during his
Paris expatriate days and on whom the character
"Francis" is based. The film is a wistful and tragic portrait that
captures the Paris jazz scene of the 1950s.
Dexter Gordon was nominated
for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and won a Grammy for the
film's soundtrack entitled "The Other Side of Round Midnight" in the
category for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Soloist. Herbie Hancock won the Academy Award for Best
Music, Original Score. The soundtrack was released in two parts: Round Midnight
and The Other Side of Round Midnight.” (From the Wikipedia)