by Imani Evans

As Jazz on a Summer's Day begins, the first thing one sees are the boats in the water. It takes but a few of these shots to establish, beyond all doubt, what can be interpreted as director Bert Stern's insistent striving for various ways of suggesting space to the viewer. This is, after all, not simply a film about jazz but also a study in the ways in which jazz both interacts with and is bounded by a very specific setting: Newport, Rhode Island, circa 1958. The film which results is, in large part, about the miracle of jazz ever finding its way into a place where the folks are well-fed, well-housed, stylishly clothed and boats on the water are an everyday occurrence.

Jazz on a Summer's Day is director Bert Stern's one and only foray into feature filmmaking, and it's quite a sterling first effort. Among other things, it's the document of a community's collective decision to transgress for one day, to be agitated sweetly by the stark testimonials of Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O' Day, Mahalia Jackson, and others.

A celebrated photographer, Stern was inspired by a friend to "take some pictures" of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. At some point he decided to produce a full-fledged motion picture. The result, in this reviewer's opinion, is a quite beautiful pronouncement on the ability of jazz to infiltrate the unlikeliest of spaces, transfiguring them from within. It's the sort of collusion that, were it much more frequent, we might take as the sine qua non of an America without hierarchy, as a monumental example of the unbounded, movement-permitting landscape that a great many of us yearn for.

But if our actual America isn't quite such an emancipated place, no matter: the Newport Jazz Festival documented in the film will do sufficiently as a stand-alone phenomenon, showing us what such an America might look like. And so, well before sundown, there's Thelonious Monk, causing his own special kind of trouble in broad daylight. The announcer builds him up nicely, even repeating all of the familiar truisms about the Monk aesthetic: his use of quarter tones, i.e. those implied notes which "lie between" the piano keys, his use of dissonance, his angular sensibility, and his utter lack of concern with critical categories. But look at what's happening (as he plays "Blue Monk" we are made to witness a most alluring incongruity: jazz being juxtaposed with bright, open spaces (the water, the sky), as opposed to the dark, cloistered spaces (bars, smoky clubs) that we typically associate with it. It is by this and other cinematic effects that a genteel, seaside community is given a syncopated lilt: so we have the sailboats on the water, gliding across the ocean blue in all of their stately splendor but with the off-kilter shuffle of "Blue Monk" as a musical backdrop. It's an example of the daring juxtapositions that, all together, constitute the film's one true artistic statement.

At a certain point I'm stopped short by a jarring shot of Eric Dolphy, rehearsing with what appears to be an avant-garde group of some kind. Ah, foreshadowing: we find out later that it's the Chico Hamilton Quintet, with none other than Dolphy himself on flute. The crowd is attentive during Eric's solo, but doesn't know quite what to make of it. Once Eric finishes his solo it becomes a scintillating duet between Hamilton(percussion), and his white guitarist, not the first time that the film makes use of such a racial contrast. It's especially apropos for this performance, as one noteworthy thing about the group's playing is that it sounds as if African rhythms (or the suggestion of such) are being overlayed with Latin harmonies.

1958 is right in the middle of jazz's high modernist period. Even within such a setting, however, Louis Armstrong manages to be completely himself and fit in like butter in a churn. He has the crowd in the palm of his hand throughout -- it starts with a somewhat schmaltzy pop tune, but segues abruptly into some good old, uptempo New Orleans-style jamming. Cool shots of audience members bobbing their heads to the music. The performance slows down again, this time we're treated to a Satch/Jack Teagarden vocal duet. They seem to be ad-libbing all the way, only singing the main chorus when they have to. We wind up the set with a jamming rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In." Troublemaker that I am, I like to think that we are witnessing the re-radicalization of Satch, or at least an example of what could happen when the master trumpeter was freed from the encrustations of his years of being co-opted by the mainstream.

Jazz on a Summer's Day is a masterpiece of a documentary. But more than that, it's also, by my way of reading, a daring piece of cultural critique. It would be praiseworthy if all it did was destabilize our shopworn notions of what jazz is and where it is worthy of being, as well as who the "beautiful people" are and what can be allowed in their sonic surroundings. But when you add the fact that it's also a fine example of cinematic craft, the result is a delectable dish indeed, satisfying to all levels of sense.