Movie should make any jazz nerd drool

Earshot Jazz Festival 2008 starts taking over Seattle Saturday, and this year's cinematic component, co-presented by SIFF Cinema, shouldn't be missed.

"Jazz on a Summer's Day" — a 1960 documentary about Rhode Island's Newport Jazz Festival, filmed and directed by photographer Bert Stern — is a musically varied, visually striking, deeply satisfying portrait of jazz and America as they were 50 years ago.

Because jazz can be academic, and because "Jazz on a Summer's Day" is shown in jazz-history classes, jazz nerds will be in the house. But you don't have to be one to "get it." Basking in the film's perfection is an easy joy.

It's a historic time capsule of fighting-shape performances by artists who draw music fans to common ground — no-contest geniuses Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson — mixed with outstanding photography.

Director Stern — the photographer most famous for 2,500 sexy Marilyn Monroe photos — claimed he had no knowledge of jazz, but a lot of appreciation for it. With his film he people-watches the mixed, horn-rimmed Newport audience milling around outside during the day, sitting on a grassy landscape of wooden folding chairs, drinking beer on beach-house roofs and dancing at night in a club. Because it's 1958, everyone seems to be modeling (it's all clean-cut men and women in shift dresses), and they're all reverent and giddy, smoking or not, deeply engaged with the music and having a good time.

The diverse performances sound and look great. With no intrusive noise, they're filmed from all angles, each an object lesson in a particular musical pursuit. The finale is full-purge gospel healing from Jackson. She embodies her music with indelible style; so does earlier performer Chuck Berry with his rock 'n' roll.

Some of the film's best musical moments capture playful novelty from people who later fell off the grid. Thelonius Monk — still at a functional place in his declining sanity arc — plays piano that sounds oddly adjusted, more smart than scattered. Years before heroin killed her, Anita O'Day is slit-lidded and lazy-eyed, a vision in white gloves, an audaciously feathered wide-brimmed hat and a little black dress. She rides the smoky, scat-y edge of vocal oblivion and teases her microphone with proximity games.

The performances are outstanding, but the cinematography gets dramatic and arty when Stern stages and directs more. A band plays in the ocean on top of jutting rocks, looking isolated and calm. Cellist Fred Katz plays the hypnotic Prelude from Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 alone in a room, shirtless and smoking, floating in a cigarette cloud (the camera zooms in to catch sweat dripping off Katz's nose).

Even the credits impress: spare and carefully arranged in a brightly colored blocky typeface you might see on an old Blue Note album cover.

Andrew Matson: 206-464-2153

or amatson@seattletimes.com