Wicked Little Letters, directed by Thea Sharrock, 2023.

with Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan, Gemma Jones, Timothy Spall.

In a small English town in the 1920s, a scandal erupts. Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) is accused of sending filthy and disgusting letters to her next door neighbor, Edith Swan (Olivia Colman), who lives with her aged parents. The charge leveled against Rose, who is known for her free use of obscenity in everyday speech, is libel. It is not Edith herself who brings the matter to the police, even though the letters are addressed to her, but Edith’s father, an angry controlling man who may as well represent the patriarchy in all of its abuse of power. The movie is about the trial, which actually took place, and the women, who did exist, with a third protagonist, a female police official named Miss Moss, who is convinced that Rose Gooding is innocent.

The three main characters–Rose who is Irish, and suspected of being an unwed mother, Edith who has lived with her controlling father her whole life, and Miss Moss who wants to investigate the case more thoroughly but can’t because of restrictions by her supervisor — are women without power. The most chilling bit of dialogue occurs at the dinner table where the Swans meet to discuss the letters that keep coming in. As it becomes clear that Rose will be imprisoned and tried for a crime she did not commit, Edith asks her mother, who is seen knitting, what she thinks. Her silence says it all: she has never been allowed to speak let alone think. Her husband has seen to all of her thoughts, and would like to continue to direct those of his daughter.

Olivia Colman as Edith Swan, and Gemma Jones as her mother

But the movie is not all melodrama or social conscience. The pleasure of watching the actors comes from the comic drift of the screenplay. There is a clever conspiracy developed by the local women who take Rose’s side and come up with bail based on the sale of a rotten pig. However, sometimes I wanted to shout out: look at the handwriting! How could these letters possibly come from Rose when the handwriting is a direct match of Edith’s?

Detective Moss (Anjana Vasan) has a central role

The actresses’ ability to show plenty with the curl of a lip, Timothy Spall’s portrayal of a so called pious Christian being the most evil one of all, these ironies and humorous twists, including a most satisfying discovery at the end being made by a young girl, make the movie a perfect antidote to the violence and horror and cgi filling our screens.

Color blind casting includes the police detective being played by a Sri Lankan actress, Rose’s boyfriend played by a black man as is the judge presiding over the case. The movie takes liberties in other ways too, from the historical record, sometimes to the point of silliness. But what matters to me is the lightness of tone considering the subject. I welcome that more than anything.

La Chimera, directed by Alice Rohrwacher, 2023.

In Italian with subtitles. Showing in theaters.

with Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher.

Feast of Epiphany

Arthur, aka Mister, (Josh O’Connor) is the lone English speaking member of a troop of Italian thieves seeking tombs laden with significant archaeological objects. When we first meet Arthur, he is wearing a crisp white linen suit. Having just been released from prison, he is angry at the rest of his cohort who want to celebrate his freedom, probably because they themselves were spared the confinement. Arthur will have none of it. He bitterly strikes off on his own by foot, for his home, a hovel on the side of a hill facing the sea, then visits his would be mother in law, Flora (Isabella Rossellini). If only his fiancee had not disappeared. Eventually his friends lure him into the parade celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany.

Flora lives in a dilapidated house, and has corralled Italia, a singing student, into waiting on her like a servant. At one point one set of thieves is set upon by another set of thieves. You never know what is actually happening, only that hardscrabble lives take a fair amount of deception.

Italia(Carol Duarte) is the woman who helps Flora with household tasks

Arthur has a gift for locating hidden treasures under the earth. He uses a divining rod at first, until his body seems to vibrate and turn upside down. Now we realize we have entered the realm of magic realism. Darkness and light. Underground, on the sea. We travel here and there in this movie, in a rhythm I trusted to the director, to carry me inside a mythical story. The action is rooted on the earth, literally, as tomb raiders seek precious objects left behind for the dead that, once retrieved, can be sold.

Finding the exact location of the tomb takes concentration

The movie treats many subjects: life and death, love and theft, the class system, heaven and earth, without feeling ponderous or pretentious. Its photography brilliantly captures the descents into tombs, that at first are very dark, and then with careful lighting, illuminate the art objects the thieves are after: vases, urns, jewelry, bowls, sculptures, paintings.

Editing and occasional fast motion scenes contribute to some of the humor and the humor is needed considering the depth of subject.

Acting, especially on the part of Josh O’Connor is excellent, but the whole cast, including the ensemble team of thieves, do their part to hold your interest. The white suit that Arthur wears is pristine at the beginning of the movie, and eventually shows the wear and tear he has suffered in his quest to find his true love, Benjamina.

I felt a powerful emotional pull throughout the movie. Some of the action took my breath away, and the closing scene left me in tears. I cannot recommend this movie enough. Alice Rohrwacher is a true artist.

In Restless Dreams, the music of Paul Simon, directed by Alex Gibney, 2024.

available on MGM+.

Alex Gibney’s two part documentary carefully portrays the aging artist who struggles to complete what may be his last composition in the face of physical decline. In the process, Gibney surveys the history of a brilliant career, beginning in high school, when he met his first partner in music, Art Garfunkel. Frustrated with his lack of success in the U.S., Simon has a brief but productive sojourn in London. On his return, he puts out his first and second albums. Collaborating with Garfunkel’s voice carried the songs to an ethereal level. After a somewhat bitter breakup with Garfunkel, who is lured by Mike Nichols to perform in movies, Simon goes on to learn from many other cultures, and musicians, most notably South Africans who were so essential to his album Graceland.

In the process of learning about the career, we witness Simon’s relationships, not only with Garfunkel, but also his marriages, most notably with Carrie Fisher, then finally, his current partnership with Edie Brickell, who lends some voice work to his 2023 album, Seven Psalms.

The footage of concerts brings joy, especially in South Africa, and Central Park, where the fans are exuberant in their support. Interviews with Cavett and other talk show hosts probe into his process and personal life. There are ponderous sessions as Simon attempts to record his new record, in the face of deafness in one ear.

The music is the real star and subject of the series. What does it take to keep writing, to keep evolving as a songwriter? Simon is a deep listener, and some may say appropriater of other cultures, but I say he is a constant student, as he learns how to become a better musician by listening to his superiors. When he was in high school, that meant the Everly Brothers, but by the time he reached middle age, he knew it was that banjo player in South Africa.

Perfect Days, directed by Wim Wenders, 2023.

Streaming on multiple platforms, including Apple TV and Youtube.

in Japanese, with subtitles.

with Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano, Ari Yamada.

Hirayama is a bookish sort. His apartment has rows of carefully sorted fiction. He is in the middle of reading Faulkner when the movie opens. Reading is how he ends each day, before falling asleep and dreaming in black and white. During the day, Hirayama fastidiously cleans toilets, the new ones that were installed in Tokyo, and make a New Yorker like me green with envy. They are pristine, beautifully designed, and cleaned every day by workers like Hirayama who is given the tools to do so. He is so careful, he uses a mirror to check underneath to make sure he has left nothing that could be called soiled.

The movie, which is punctuated by the playing of Hirayama’s collection of audiotapes of music from the 1960s and 1970s, follows Hirayama on day after day of his labor, his lunches, his off time. He does not say much, but he does not need to. It is clear that the man has a soul worth spending time with. He observes those around him. When he hears a small child in one of the toilets calling out for his mother, he goes in to retrieve him and return him to his mother. This is one of the most moving scenes in the movie. It shows Hirayama at his best, just doing what needs to be done. The movie made me think. It made me wonder, what is important in life? To have meaningful work? To tend to those who need you? To do good?

Hirayama lets Takashi drive his car, with his girlfriend, Aya, who likes Hirayama’s tape of Patti Smith

Hirayama has a young colleague, Takashi, who could not be more unlike him. Takashi does not really care for his job. He is trying to impress his girlfriend, Aya, who likes Hirayama’s tape of Patti Smith so much that she steals it. Takashi realizes that those tapes might be worth money, and he tries to get his colleague to sell them. But that would be wrong. The movie builds on each song that is played, starting with the House of the Rising Sun, and going on to Lou Reed’s Perfect Day.

Even though there is not much of a plot, there are episodes that give you a sense of the main character’s background. His niece, Niko (is this a reference to Nico of the Velvet Underground?) arrives unannounced, and settles in without explanation. Hirayama accepts her as she is, and takes her with him on his rounds. It is clear that she is comfortable with her uncle and looks up to him. As they exit the bathhouse where Hirayama brings her (since he has no real bathroom), a phone call leads to the retrieval of the girl by her mother. Rifts between brother and sister, and parents, bring pain.

Hirayama in book store, examining Patricia Highsmith’s Stories

Hirayama with his niece Niko who is clearly trying to learn her uncle’s habits

As he moves on from Faulkner to Aya Kona and from there to Patricia Highsmith, there is anxiety afoot. An estranged husband visits his ex wife. Hirayama smokes again, for the first time in years. But somehow the mood lifts when he and the husband engage in a playful game of shadow tag.

The music of Nina Simone brings into focus how a life well lived does not need to include huge accomplishments, just an ability to perform your work well every day, to observe closely those around you, and to enjoy nature.

The cinematography is as pristine as Hirayama’s apartment. The editing has a fluidity that is lovely.

One of the things Hirayama does every day is to photograph the trees overhead, and to bring back home the developed prints, which he keeps in careful order inside boxes.

So are Hirayama’s perfect days stored.

Monsieur Spade (series)directed by Scott Frank, 2024.

with Clive Owen, Cara Bossom, Louise Bourguin, Stanley Weber, Jonathan Zaccai, Denis Menochet, Rebecca Root, Matthew Beard, and many many others

on AMC with so many ads you forget what you are watching, and want to pay for the premium package

Terese is played by Boston, and Spade by Clive Owen

I reread the Maltese Falcon to remind myself of who Sam Spade was exactly. A hard boiled private eye in San Francisco in the beginning of the century, after the first world war, before the second, he was hired, sometimes with his partner, Miles Archer, to find people. Brigid O’Shaughnessy becomes one of his clients who can’t tell the truth even when she tries. 

The tv series imagines that, twenty years later, Spade is entrusted with O’Shaughnessy’s daughter (Brigid has been killed in a train wreck). Teresa, the girl, aged four, is to meet up with her father in France, so Spade drives to the grandmother’s house in search of him. Thus begins the odyssey of reconnection between Teresa and Philippe St. Andre. 

A lot has happened since the second world war. Another military incident in Algeria has had France painted the bad guy. Philippe St. Andre seems to have played a double dealing part. The major flaw in the tv series is how long it takes for us to learn what he did exactly to make him such a covert operator.

In the meantime, Spade is faced with assassinated nuns, secret agents jumping him in his house, a mysterious boy who seems to be wanted by at least three secret ops. 

There are so many characters that I am listing some of them here:

Jean Pierre and Terese

Zayd is the little Muslim boy who is the object of many spy networks. He whistles an American tune as he is released to a mysterious man, perhaps the father of Teresa.

An English family –Cynthia and George consisting of mother and son who pretends to be a landscape painter, mother played by a transwoman

Matthew Beard plays young George Fitzsimmons

Cynthia Fitzsimmons pretends to be the mother of an artist

A police commissioner, Patrice, who must investigate the murder of six nuns at the convent school where Teresa is a student

Spade with Patrice, local police commissioner

Teresa’s grandmother and father are elusive, and bad

Spade gets married to Gabrielle (Mastroianni) who owns a beautiful mansion and vineyard. When we meet her, she saves Spade and the girl when they are turned away from the house where Teresa was supposed to find her father. A tree has fallen on Spade’s car. Teresa is in the back seat. Gabrielle gives them a lift, and ends up a major background figure, as Mrs. Spade, but rarely part of the main action.

During a flashback in episode 4 she murders her first husband, and throws him in a ditch, or remembers throwing him into the sea, along with many other French citizens who seem intent on eliminating nasty people who are secretly Nazis perhaps. It is not clear.

Jean Pierre does a lot of heavy lifting, being married to Marguerite, a nightclub owner and singer, who happens to have sung with J-P’s father. J-P spent time in Algeria, suffers from PTSD, and keeps assignations with mysterious hoodlums at night.

I just wanted to stitch together all of the random plot points that are thrown together willy nilly time wise, as if it is a jigsaw puzzle. The audience has to do too much work. I am all in favor of not being treated like a moron when I watch something on screen, but I don’t like being played with. Does that sound like something Spade would say? “I won’t be the sap for you!”

The final episode tries to stitch everything together, the way Hercule Poirot did, in a room, with all the major suspects, or evildoers, or just major characters, gathered to hear the great mind explain it all.

The acting and production and costumes, everything else fits just right. It is the screenplay that is at fault, with a lot of jumping back and forth, as if the writers have ADHD, or are used to looking at their phones between commercials.

Arc of Oblivion, directed by Ian Cheney, 2023.

If you were worried about losing your digital files, would you immediately think of building an ark? Ian Cheney, documentary filmmaker, was worried about his film footage in his hard drives going bad. It was making sounds like his son playing basketball at night. This is a metaphor for the fleeting nature of life, how nothing lasts, and thinking about preserving the things that matter to us.

The movie starts with Cheney having an ark, a literal wooden ship, landlocked, but a ship, built on a piece of land in Maine owned by his parents. During the course of this architecture project, we hear from scientists who study the rings in trees, in clams, in fish, how they determine the kind of years they had as they grew older. We hear from a cave scientist, in Majorca, Spain, who digs deep into the guano laid down by thousands of bats, because the soil over the years tells the story of what happened, in terms of its chemical makeup, its moisture content, etc. As Cheney delves into the subject, which turns out to be archiving, and storage of memory, he digs deep. The science verges on philosophy.

What is worth keeping? Who gets to decide? What ever lasts? In the process of exploring these questions, he visits not only Majorca, Spain, but also the Sahara desert where some of the oldest libraries in the world attempt to keep the books safe from the encroaching sand. He visits the Bahamas where a poet, Yasmin Glinton Poitier, visits the house where she grew up, its walls still painted pink, that was destroyed by hurricane Dorian in 2019. We meet Carrie House, a native American filmmaker who wanted to make a film about her brother who had died. She and Ian were working together in Maine on the project, and the footage they made got lost. One of the terrible things about not keeping track, of not archiving, especially with digital, is that when it is gone, there is no trace. An element of sadness creeps in during this segment.

But most of the movie points to discovery, learning the ways that things are organized, preserved. How human activity has already had an impact on what we thought was pristine, the Arctic,, which shows traces of antidepressant chemicals in the waters. A great deal of energy goes in to the beautiful photography. A walrus hovers near the shore and it is hard to get tired of watching his orb shaped face, his long whiskers of cinnamon color, his seeking eyes. What are we looking for he seems to say.

The ark gets built from the ground up, with the carpenter sawing the tree, planing the wood, and marveling at the lunar moth that lands on his saw. The carpenter describes it as only a Maine citizen would: as “wicked pretty.” Other random elements stand out, like the footage of Cheney’s son, in pajamas, playing basketball one night when he couldn’t sleep, the small phone recording the boy’s excellence at sinking shot after shot. Photography can be considered a kind of archive. Ian Cheney likes to show his video on old 1950s size tvs, a reminder of how technology is constantly changing.

Just because I could ask the man in Austria to record a poem of mine by having it engraved on ceramic plates and buried in the bottom of the Alps as an archive, does not mean that I am even remotely tempted to do so. Some things go too far to be archived. Like the scientist who wants his bones to be buried at the foot of the Mississippi so that they will be fossilized. Everything isn’t fossilized. And that is not a bad thing.

In the end, we hear a poem by Shelley read by Herzog, the one that ends,

“Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

By then, we have gotten the point, and enjoyed so many images and scientific ideas and philosophical questions.

Werner Herzog makes a brief appearance to read Shelley’s poem, “Ozymandias”

The Taste of Things directed by Trần Anh Hùng, 2003.

with Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel

There are similarities to the movie Menu Plaisirs Les Troigros, directed by Frederick Wiseman. The subject is French cooking, the fine details of which are documented from the plucking of vegetables in carefully farmed plots to the chopping, slicing, sautéing, saucing, and plating of the finished meal for the diner of whom we are jealous. It all looks so delicious, so worth the trouble. Wiseman’s movie documents an actual contemporary restaurant, while Tran Anh Hung has adapted a historical novel written by Marcel Rouf set in the late 1800s in rural France.

The Taste of Things is not just about the pleasures of cooking, but the pleasures of sharing that passion with your partner. In this case, Dodin (Magimel) seems to be the owner of a restaurant, or is he simply a rich lad with very fortunate friends who eat the meals he has made with the help of Eugenie (Binoche)? Dodin and Eugenie have shared kitchen duty and bed for over twenty years. Eugenie performs the tasks that Dodin reads to her, based on recipes and menus he has culled. 

Since the action of the picture takes place in the 19th century, the labor includes drawing water from a well in buckets, pouring it into containers, washing vegetables, making ice cream. Each portion of work shows a level of care that borders on fussiness, but when the vol au vent is served, it is a work of art. The baked alaska (omelet Norvegienne in French) is almost de trop, after the six or eight or ten courses that preceded it. 

A Eurasian prince gets wind of this great chef, Dodin, and invites him and his cohort to dine with him. It becomes like a bake off. Eight hours later, the men depart, slightly ill from the muchness served to them.

an exquisite loin of veal is one of the courses prepared

This brings a return invitation, and just as Dodin is figuring out what his menu will be…something major occurs. In the meantime, we are introduced to a young girl, the niece of one of the servants, named Pauline, whose taste buds are very well trained, and is deemed worthy of study under the master.

The culinary episode contains a love story, so instead of serving the prince at first, Dodin serves an exquisite meal to his Eugenie. Watching the movie made me want to cook with great care, not just throw things together the way they do on cooking shows. I wanted to prepare something tenderly, with precision, and serve it to my one true love. Cooking is a form of love, and this movie demonstrates why.

Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023.

with Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, William Dafoe, Ramy Youssef.

A girl named Bella is living with a man she refers to as God. God is a scientist who found Bella washed up on the shore with other dead things, and decided to perform an experiment on her, replacing Bella’s brain with the brain of a living infant. As a result of the infant’s immaturity, Bella matures the way a baby would, in fits and starts, taking uncertain steps, expressing herself with no self control, acting out, screaming, throwing things around. God, played by Willem Dafoe, decides to hire Max (Youssef), a medical student, as his assistant to monitor Bella’s progress, to keep data on her every day. As Bella grows up, even though she started with the body of a mature woman, she begins to enjoy herself especially in a sexual way.

Mark Ruffalo is Duncan, a lawyer who falls in love with Bella

This leads to men learning to enjoy her as well. As Bella breaks free of God’s extremely confining quarters, and is taken away by a caddish lover, Duncan (Ruffalo), to Lisbon, she learns not only how to behave more politely, but how to think. She develops a conscience and feels pity for the poor. She reads Emerson. When the money she thinks she is giving to charity is all gone, she earns her living as a prostitute and joins a socialist movement. 

Eventually she returns to God when he really needs her more than she needs him. The full circle of her life has twists and turns, but is centered on God (I just learned by reading about the author of the novel on which the film is based that God is short for Godwin, not a term of homage to a superior creature).

Emma Stone must act first as a know nothing baby, eventually becoming a full scale adult capable of managing her own life, her own sexuality, escaping the control of men. Her development from all id to superego must have been fun to perform. The screenplay, based on a fantastic novel, which has as its inspiration Frankenstein, asks if it is possible to create a human from another human, transplanting another person’s brain, combining elements of scientific and emotional knowledge.

The makeup of Dafoe shows how scarred he is from the beginning.

The costuming is extreme. Bella is made to wear giant puffy sleeves, or mini skirts (this during the Victorian era). The sets and costumes and make up let you know that this is science fiction, not historical drama. Photography often centers from a fish eye lens, forcing the audience to see things up close, and in a distorted way with the sides curved. It exaggerates the imaginary lives we are watching.

I wondered about certain things that did not add up, even though the whole premise was fantasy. Why does Bella explain that the reason Victoria killed herself was that the baby was a monster. If she was reincarnated from Victoria with the baby’s brain, how could she have known what Victoria was thinking if she was no longer Victoria?

There were also some holes in the plot. Where did Max, Bella’s betrothed, find Duncan, after the excursion on the boat was aborted? Was he in an insane asylum?

Stone wearing one of the extreme costumes

Nineteenth century philosophy asked questions about the meaning of being human, what responsibility humans have for other humans. How these questions relate to Bella’s development makes the movie have a philosophical layer. The feminist viewpoint makes perfect sense, and has a victory lap at the end.

Derry Girls (2018-2022)

on Netflix

I know it is not new, but in the absence of good tv with a humorous bent, we have been rewatching this hilarious show set in Londonderry, Ireland, during the troubles (1990s). Maybe it’s because I attended a Catholic school in an Irish Catholic neighborhood myself, and was not always loved by the nuns. I related heartily to a three-generation family crowded into the house, and cousins constantly showing up, and a cranky ma who would rather not pay for your birthday bash.

The five youths going to the all girls school make up the main cast:

Erin (Saorise-Monica Jackson), who thinks she is more brilliant than she is, and wants to be a writer

Orla (Louisa Harland), Erin’s cousin, a bit on the spectrum, and happy to be there

Claire (Nichola Coughlan), a brainy plump friend, whose anxiety is always showing

Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), a horny girl who just wants a ride, and I don’t mean on a horse

James (Dylan Llewellyn), Michelle’s cousin, an outsider in every way, not only that he is a boy going to an all girls school, but the fact that he is British, and Protestant

The show features excellent ensemble acting with the older generation, including a very cranky grandfather who is mean at all times to his son in law, two sisters one of whom might generously be labeled a bimbo (all she thinks about is how she looks), a mysterious baby who must be Erin’s sister but is never mentioned, or looked at by the teens in the film. The Troubles crop up at odd moments as they must have for the writer of the show (Lisa McGee) and lend a serious air so that you know the girls are not just mindless idiots. They have to navigate bomb laden streets at times.

You might fault the casting of the teens with much older actors, but this did not bother me because the acting worked so well. And there are key moments with the older folk, including a very boring uncle named Colm (Kevin McLeer). Who does not have one of these relatives in their family? The guy who you pray you are not seated next to at dinner, because you will have to listen to endless tales about nothing you are remotely interested in.

Adults in the family: Aunt Kathy, parents Mary (Kathy’s sister) and Gerry, and Joe (Mary and Kathy’s father

Here is Colm going on about something boring.

Another great treat throughout the series is the depiction of the no nonsense nun, sister Michael (Siobhan McSweeney).

By the third season, you know things have changed. By that time, President Clinton has visited to move the peace talks along, and hopes abound that the Troubles may end.  Early episodes hobble a bit, but at the conclusion, I am moved to tears at how things get wrapped up. I think we have watched the series three times now. I never grow tired of it. 

Artie Shaw: Time is all you’ve got, directed by Brigitte Berman, 1985.

seen at the Film Forum, in a remastered version

The movie begins with this quote from Emily Dickinson:

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog – 
To tell one’s name – the livelong June – 
To an admiring Bog!

And so we learn of Artie Shaw’s relationship with his celebrity, he who taught himself first the saxophone, then the clarinet. After dropping out of school, he made his living up to 1929, when he was 19 years old, writing commercial music to promote products. Bored with this work, he began playing with real musicians, and became a famous band leader, with great hits– the first being his recording of the Cole Porter classic, Begin the Beguine, which led to his celebrity. The swing era was kind to Artie. Jitterbug dancing craze made him extremely popular, which led to his ditching the whole thing. He did not like being surrounded by morons including dancers who rushed the stage and nearly knocked out his teeth with their vigorous kicking.

For Artie Shaw was first and foremost an intellectually curious man who had no truck with those lesser mortals interested only in losing their minds over their dance partners. He could be difficult. Ask one of his eight wives, most of whom were actresses, including Evelyn Keyes, who spoke candidly of Shaw’s overbearing personality, but who obviously still held some affection for him. Mel Torme looked up to him but knew better than to cross him.

Holiday with Shaw and other band members

Shaw was credited with hiring Billie Holliday, breaking a color barrier, in the 1930s, to sing in his band, when they were both very young, and not used to navigating the deep south with its segregation policies. 

Shaw’s ambition was to be a writer. Whenever he could he would quit music, and move to a rural location, where he would be surrounded by books, and write. His first book, The Trouble with Cinderella, was an autobiography. He wrote several novels as well.

The movie gives a chronology of Shaw’s life up through the 1980s, when Brigitte Berman originally made it, and afterward received an Oscar for Best Documentary Film in 1985. Early years get the most detailed treatment, up to and including the war years, when Shaw enlisted in the navy. His heavy schedule, and questioning mind, brought on a nervous breakdown, and subsequent psychoanalysis to understand what made him want to continue living.

Always restless, when he came back to the United States from his station in the Pacific, he took up music again, and had a bit of a resurgence until he wanted to include a string quartet in his swing orchestras. This did not always work with audiences who longed for the old pop hits of his youth. By the 1950s when he was interrogated at the House on Un-American Activities, he had grown so disillusioned with his country that he moved to Spain, and built a house on a cliff overlooking the sea. 

He never seemed to suffer poverty. From one beautiful farm house to a house on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, to a calm country manor in Connecticut, Shaw’s restlessness shows itself in his constantly starting, and then dismissing bands, moving from one coast to another, marrying one woman after another. The one constant in Shaw’s life, besides his pronounced talent to play the clarinet, was his curiosity about everything. His houses always contained huge libraries of books that he had read. When he took up fishing in Spain, he built a special room that contained not only his fishing gear, but his library of books about fishing. Evelyn Keyes, his last wife, explained how you could ask him anything about fish, and he could tell you. She also remarked how fish were located in beautiful places, explaining how Shaw’s restlessness and love of fishing went hand in hand.

I wanted to see this movie because I love the recordings I have of Shaw’s music, especially his clarinet playing. As one of his band mates described it, it had a fatter tone than Benny Goodman, with whom he had a brief rivalry during the swing era. Watching the crazed jitterbugger, I wondered what propelled them to such speedy moves, and thought it must have had to do with getting out of the Depression. Dancing your way to great music thanks to Artie Shaw must have been extremely satisfying.