Gypsies & jazz

Tony Gatlif and Robert Altman

With Gadjo Dilo, a crowd-pleasing movie (click here to see a full review) about a young Frenchman (Romaine Duris) who treks to Romania seeking a Gypsy singer whose voice is on a tape recording, Tony Gatlif, part Gypsy himself, completes a trio of films (also Latcho Drom and Mondo) celebrating Gypsy life.

"I love trilogies," Gatlif, speaking in French, told the press at the Locarno Film Festival last year. "It took me 15 years to accomplish this film trilogy. And the more I shot the Gypsies, the more I discovered I didn't know about them. I wanted to put myself in their shoes, so I kept living with them. I wanted to free myself of the nasty look of outsiders, who kept telling me stupid things about Gypsies. The only people who know about them are the police, who have been dealing with them since the Middle Ages, and rightly or wrongly accusing them of doing things."

Duris, the Gadjo Dilo star, is a pretty-boy French actor, a Tom Cruise lightweight. But Gadjo Dilo has two inspired bits of casting: Isidor Serban, a real-life Gypsy playing a crusty, always inebriated Gypsy patriarch, and Rona Hartner, a vibrant Romanian actress, playing a sexually charged Gypsy woman so effectively that everyone who sees the movie is sure she's the real thing.

"Isidor's never acted before, never spoken into a microphone," Gatlif explained. "And he never thought for a moment that if he played drunk, he didn't really need to be drunk."

And the casting of Hartner, who won a Best Actress award at Locarno? "I saw her in a video cassette. She was someone very wild, also extremely feminine. When we met, the only thing she did was that she started to sing a song for me in Romanian. It was very erotic, and I decided, 'This is going to be the rhythm of the film.'"

"When we shot, many of the crew were scared of catching lice and fleas. But Rona lived with the Gypsy women in their tent, held their babies. The more she did it, the more she was a true Gypsy."

Someone asked Gatlif whether he was influenced in making Gadjo Dilo by Yugoslavian Emir Kusturica's Time of the Gypsies. The question peeved him. "I follow my own road, shoot my own films. I love John Ford, for instance, and some of my frames remind me of Ford. But Kusturica is not one I love." He dismissed as nonsense Time of the Gypsies' most breathtaking scene, in which the Gypsies light up a river with candles. "That's way too expensive for Gypsies. There are rich Gypsies, but they'd spend their money on jewelry, or on gold teeth."

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As one who suffered through Robert Altman's woeful Kansas City, I wasn't exactly gleeful to learn that he had reprised some of the musical sequences and even stretched them out for another go-around: Jazz '34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing (which is playing August 27 and 30 at the Museum of Fine Arts). Well, rest easy. This time Altman gets it right, in a heartfelt tribute to the jazz heritage of his Midwest home town. Here's a consummate treat for jazz fans, 75 minutes of tangy period swing music (tunes by, among others, Lester Young, Count Basie, Duke Ellington) interpreted by, brilliantly improvised by, a put-together big band of 1990s superstars.

Whew! When again will you see on the same stage such stellar musicians as tenor saxmen David Murray and Joshua Redman, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, clarinettist Don Byron, bassists Ron Carter and Christian McBride? In Jazz '34, they jam through the night at a mythical honky-tonk called the Hey Hey Club. There's dancing, too, and the bartender (Kevin Mahogany) steps out to belt a song. The musicians, their solos over, act studly, with peachy gals hanging over their shoulders.

What exactly are we watching? A metaconcert film? A fictionalized documentary? Today's jazz stars are in 1930s pinstriped suits, so are they occupying the skins of 1930s jazz instrumentalists? Or are they swaggering about as their contemporary selves at a musical costume ball? Is Geri Allen imitating the piano style of Mary Lou Williams? Or is Allen playing the piano as the actual Williams?

Or does any of the above matter? The music is exuberant -- i.e., a simulated "cutting" contest between Joshua Redman and Craig Handy, in homage to an actual battle of the tenor-sax giants (Mary Lou Williams recalled it to jazz critic Nat Hentoff) when immortals Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins went at it. Other musical highlights: a showman number in which the trumpet section (Olu Dara, Nicholas Payton, James Zollar) take turns with off-the-chart mutes (a porkpie hat, an empty water pitcher, a bare hand); a soulful bass number with Ron Carter and Christian McBride; virtuoso stride piano by the great and very heavyweight Cyrus Chestnut.

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Here's notice of a fundraiser for a worthy documentary film project, Between Survival and Memory: The Cape Verdean Struggle in New England. The film uses a Cape Cod community as its focal point to recount the story of Cape Verdean immigration to the USA. The event ($10, $7 for women before 11 p.m.) takes place next Friday, August 28, from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. at the Days Inn at 1234 Soldier's Field Road. There's live Cape Verdean music and free finger food. Call 247-0216.