In Melville's films, jazz is often heard in sequences showing
bars or night-clubs, it's a kind of constant thing in most of
his noir films.
Speaking of French noir, there's the soundtrack
of A BOUT DE SOUFFLE by Godard, a New Wave classic wherein
Martial Solal plays jazz he wrote. Rather "avant-garde" at
the time, his music is well mixed with the film, but Solal
never received until now a sufficient acclaim during his
career as jazz composer and musician.
I do not know if he is well known in the USA by
jazz fans.
Roger Vadim used jazz music in his films at a
early stage: MJQ made the soundtrack of SAIT-ON JAMAIS
(1957); he will use Art blakey- Barney Willen, Monk and
others in his LIAISONS DANGEREUSES 1960 (1959)
There were also minor crime films using jazz
extensively. Most of the time the music was better than the
films, often good Bs but rarely more: DES FEMMES
DISPARAISSENT (Jazz messengers), UN TEMOIN DANS LA VILLE
(Barney Willen)
Also: J'IRAI CRACHER SUR VOS TOMBES, a poor film
being a derivation from Vian's fake "American" HB novel.
Vian, as you may know, was a jazz fan and critic, played
trumpet, but I do not think he was consultant for the music.
Music however was OK.
Another flop, but this time by a master French
film maker: LES TRICHEURS (1958) by Marcel Carn黠fortunately
in order to look "modern" the film was supported by brilliant
jazz music by Roy Elridge, Stan Getz and others.
Most of these French films were done during the
second half of the fifties and it was not by chance
Main factors:
-increasing popularity of modern jazz in Europe
(especially France, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, England)
-a lot of top American jazz stars were living now
in Paris : because of the racial tolerance they lived there
compared to their own country… and probably also: easy access
to drugs, as in France it was not dealed on a big scale, at
the time, neither popular with the public (so less police
controls except for traffic organizers)
-easiness to obtain other stars, for
concerts…etc, in Europe. As close to the end of the fifties,
the American labels gave the kiss of death to jazz music in
the USA, Europe became an important place to provide work to
these musicians then.
By all this, and even more than London, since end
of the forties and early fifties Paris became a buoyant jazz
center, because of the American players living there- and it
attracted a lot of good European players there too.
Fortunately, a jazz label issued a few years ago
a tremendous series of records (more than 70) that were made
during that period of time in Paris; it's an imprint linked
to Emarcy, title of the series: JAZZ IN PARIS.
E.Borgers
POLAR NOIR
http://www.geocities.com/polarnoir
Karin Montin <
kmontin@sympatico.ca> a 飲it : I watched Bob le
Flambeur this week and it has a pretty jazzy score. There's
music in every scene, I think. I've started watch The Naked
City, which by contrast has not a single note of music, at
least in the first forty minutes.
Karin
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