CUNY: Sweet Love, Bitter

His name is Eagle and he plays the alto saxophone. Does that sound like any real-life jazz musician? A musical titan with a drug habit approaching the superhuman, Ritchie “The Eagle” Stokes is indeed patterned after bebop innovator Charlie “Bird” Parker in Herbert Danska’s Sweet Love, Bitter, one of the better cinematic treatments of the jazz life, which screens this week on CUNY’s City Cinematheque.

The parallels between Stokes and Parker are even greater in John A. Williams’ novel Night Song, on which Danska’s film is based. At one point we meet a former Stokes sideman who has made good in a big way. With his flashy car and elegant clothing, it hardly seems a stretch to consider Miles Davis the inspiration for the character named Yards Brown.

While his ex-sideman might be on the way up, Stokes is bottoming out, both in Williams’ novel and Danska’s film. However, he is not alone. Mourning the death of his wife, former college professor David Hillary’s goal is to literally drink himself to death. To facilitate this plan, he hocks his wedding ring, but in the process meets an African-American man pawning his sax.

As a fan of jazz in general, and Stokes in particular, Hillary is all too willing to let the Eagle show him the ropes of binge-drinking for the down-and-out set. A quick learner, he and Eagle are nearly whisked off to the drunk-tank, but for the intercession of Keel, Stokes’ self-appointed minder.

The African-American Keel hires the depressed white professor to work in his downtown coffee-house, setting up an unusual racial dynamic for 1967. Further complicating their relationship, Hillary finds himself attracted to Della, Keel’s white lover. In between pointed comments about race, Hillary and Keel try to corral the self-destructive Eagle, often finding him at the home of Candy, a white admirer seemingly inspired by the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, the jazz patron at whose home the real Parker died. (Bitter however, seems to posit a presumably fictional sexual aspect to their relationship.)

In his first screen role, Dick Gregory looks scarily dissipated as Stokes. Though Eagle can be playful, Gregory plays it straight, creating quite a tragic portrait. Also making his screen debut, Robert Hooks (the original Mr. T in Trouble Man) brings legitimate intensity to a standout supporting performance. However, though Don Murray’s Hillary is supposed to be a fish out of water, his stiffness seems excessively wooden at times.

Music is critical to a film about tortured musical genius, and in this case Bitter delivers the goods. Jazz pianist Mal Waldron’s moody bop soundtrack perfectly fits its characters, with George Coleman eloquently ghosting Eagle’s alto. Bitter was Waldron’s second film score, but it would be his first soundtrack album. While he composed themes for Shirley Clarke’s Cool World and is heard performing them with Dizzy Gillespie in the actual film, Gillespie would record the soundtrack album with his regular working group, including Kenny Barron in the piano chair.

Bitter is a jazz film that gets the jazz right. It hasn’t always worked out that way. Danska’s sympathetic direction and Waldron’s passionate music make the film work even for the most discriminating jazz audiences. It screens on CUNY-TV 75 at 9:00 this Saturday and Sunday. While it seems like most of City Cinematheque’s post-screening commentators are more miss than hit, Danska, who should have plenty of insight to offer, will discuss the film with the program host.

CUNY Love for Kieslowski

Best known for his visually striking Trois Couleurs trilogy, Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski was not considered a political filmmaker, per se. However, as seen as part of a current retrospective series on CUNY TV’s City Cinematheque, his early films do reflect the current Polish political realities of their time in subtle, oblique ways.

Camera Buff (1979) is considered a somewhat light-hearted film, at least by Kieslowski’s standards. However, there is still plenty of drama and even tragedy for his working class characters. Filip is an ordinary factory worker given an 8mm camera as a present upon the birth of his daughter. He is subsequently hired by his boss to record the plant’s anniversary celebration. It sets in motion a passion for amateur filmmaking which suggests parallels with professional filmmaking under the auspices of the Polish state authorities. Even on that first assignment he learns how touchy things can get when you start pointing a camera around a Communist country. His boss tells him: “There’s a guy with glasses . . . We need to see him less . . . Or better still, not at all.”

The other two Kieslowski films recently aired on CUNY-TV deal with political issues a bit more explicitly. The Scar (1976) tells an industrial story similar to Trace of Stones, in which the state planning process is exposed as inefficient and incompetent. Despite the protests of the local community, a massive factory project is planned for a depressed province. We hear the arrogant local party boss sneer at “those who lecture us on the beauty of nature” and we see the clear-cutting of forests to make way for progress. Bednarz, a basically decent manager is called in to oversee, but the project is arguably dangerous and certainly doomed to failure.

No End (1985) is set during, and is a direct product of, the early 1980’s Martial Law. Attorney Antek Zyro’s ghost looms over his wife as she mourns his loss. She meets with the wife of an imprisoned Solidarity organizer Zyro was defending, yet she does not make a deep connection. Zyro’s former mentor takes over his case, but it seems his ghost is concerned his former mentor will be too willing to betray his client’s principles for the sake of his defense. Indeed, the elderly advocate eventually cuts a deal with a bogus union established to shill for the government. While we are clearly meant to identify with the plight of Solidarity supporters, Kieslowski does not to belabor the point. No End is actually quite effective for portraying desperation as an everyday reality and therefore not at all extraordinary.

The CUNY series continues with two more films. So far, it has also featured some of CUNY’s more insightful post-film commentary, coming in two cases from former Polish filmmaking colleagues. The next installment will be Blind Chance, a sort of precursor to Sliding Doors, which was banned by the Communist government for five years—always a promising indication of quality. It runs on Saturday and Sunday at nine o’clock. No End also repeats Friday at midnight and past installments often re-run at odd times during the week.

CUNY Pick: Black Dju

CUNY, the City University of New York, has a public affairs cable network here in the city that also broadcasts some arts programming. In addition to Classic Arts Showcase, a compilation show of performing arts video clips, CUNY also produces City Cinematheque, one of the few remaining cable outlets that from time to time shows foreign films—and not just crossover hits, but films that are may have received limited American distribution. The movies are followed by a discussion by the host and a guest scholar, and you would certainly be forgiven for tuning out at that point.

This weekend’s Black Dju merits a nod for the music alone by André Mergenthaler and the great Cameroonian funk-jazz artist Manu Dibango. The Makossa Man also appears as himself, playing for a house party in the Immigrant’s Hostel, which is a stretch, but cool none-the-less. Also appearing briefly in a strictly dramatic role is Cape Verdian vocalist Cesária Évora.

The story involves Dju’s search for his father, a “guest worker” in Luxemburg, who has lost contact with the family in Cape Verde. Dju sets out to find him, but is quickly swept up by the cops, dutifully following their new immigration control directives. He does however, meet a new ally, Plettschette, a burned out inspector at odds with the force’s new policies and alienated from most of his colleagues. Often it is easier to suspend disbelief in foreign films because the actors are largely unfamiliar and frequently less image conscious. (Sean Penn as a brain surgeon? I think not.) Here haggard does not begin to describe Philippe Léotard’s Plettschette, who looks as if he has been pounding nails with his face.

Dju is the first installment of City Cinematheque’s series, “On the Move: Recent Films about Immigration,” but the post-film commentary suggested it was a bit of a ringer in the mix and not a true movie about the immigrant experience. For instance, a lot of the white European characters, like Plettschette, his barkeeper friend, and the manager of the hostel, were actually, believe it or not, nice. They almost sounded disappointed by this.

They do suggest that it shows gross mistreatment of illegal aliens. While some abuse is depicted, the film is far from an expose. If you believe a country has the right to enforce their own immigration laws, there is even less to find outrageous here (though certainly Dju’s father is ill-treated). Weird commentary, but a good movie (with a great soundtrack), and evidently not available on DVD and was not released on VHS (whatever that was). It runs again tomorrow at 9:00 and next Friday at midnight.