This film really stuck with me, and so I feel compelled to say a few things about it.
It's one of the earliest concert films I've ever seen, and honestly maybe one of the better ones. I say that as someone who likes some jazz sometimes but wouldn't count it among my personal favourite music genres. That being said, the performances here are largely great, and it does a fantastic job of showing why jazz means so much to so many people. It conveys how fun jazz can be, how entertaining its musicians can be, the technical prowess involved, and also how it can be surprisingly moving.
Only a handful of names were familiar to me, but all proved entertaining to watch. Chuck Berry stood out in a slightly jarring way, being more of a rock artist than a jazz artist, but he ended up fitting in well. There's a nice flow to all the performers, I liked how it included the MC introducing them, and I loved the concert's progression from day to night.
In general, the visuals are what elevate this from being a good concert film with entertaining music and performances to a great concert film/ documentary. My favourite part might of been the montage of life in Newport on that day, about halfway through the film- of course it could have been filmed on a different day, but it's such great, hypnotic filmmaking that you don't think about it at the time. Seeing these people dancing, drinking, smoking, especially the people on the roof... it was surprisingly beautiful and moving.
I was born almost 40 years after this concert even took place, but somehow, it still managed to evoke a strong sense of nostalgia. I don't doubt that life was still complicated back then, and there were hardships and tribulations in the same way to how those things exist nowadays. Yet for 80-something minutes, you don't think about that. You're transported into a town that for one summer's day, in 1958, allowed all its citizens to have the time of their lives, and there's something incredibly and unexpectedly beautiful about that, even for a 25-year-old, very casual jazz fan like myself.
I'd recommend this to all fans of concert films and documentaries, or maybe just films in general. I'm happy to see a high score on here, but the low number of ratings is a little saddening. This deserves to be considered at least a minor classic, but even if that never happens, I'm glad I watched it, and am thankful to my grandfather for recommending it; without him, I may have never even heard of it.
