Moving images and jazz music came together earlier than the advent of sound films: many future celebrated musicians cut their teeth playing ragtime pieces to accompany the showing of films. At the time of silent movies black artists only used to dance like monkeys, while the coloured characters were played by white actors with blackened faces. This also happened in the first sound film in history, The Jazz Singer (1927), in which the white star, Al Jolson, is made up to be black. The turning point came in 1929 with King Vidor’s film Halleluja! which starred coloured actors only.

The films chosen by Andrea Zennaro in this series are intended to illustrate the short-circuit between image and music by showing material from the whole history of cinema: from Black and Tan Fantasy (1929) starring Duke Ellington, which preceded the fashion for soundies by ten years, to Miles Davis’ improvisation in Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows; 1958) and Bird (1988), the biopic of Charlie Parker retold with heart-rending realism by Clint Eastwood.

Institute of Music
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