Jazz on a Summer's Day

The first festival film, presenting a small but immensely satisfying group of highlights, illustrating a time when jazz from transitioning from its bohemian margins to a more mainstream audience. Every performance is great and the cinematography is extraordinary. The beauty of this film is how it picks out audience members enrapt by the music, and the shots of the artists are gorgeous. A fantastic, highly enjoyable and visually captivating document of the music, its performers and its audience.

I was in the perfect mood for this on a late summer day and it was beautiful. The mix between shots of the performers and the audience is very appropriate and really helps give the film the feel of something more than a concert film. My only complaint is that it peaked a little early.

The best music doc of all time? This is really a mood piece which captures the stylish audience and vibe of Newport as much as the performances. Every frame is beautifully composed, and it all seems as fresh as if it happened yesterday.

Most reviews I have read of this film seem to be looking back with 20/20 2020 vision and criticizing the choice of who was filmed. Given who is in the film, most of the footage is remarkable and it's a really amazing time capsule. There's precious little footage of performances like these, and the fact that it's so well shot and so many of the performances are amazing makes this a real gem.

It's very relaxing to take in the jazz festival atmosphere, layered with shots of sailing boats and town houses.

That Bert Stern never made another film is a tragedy.

Oh, that cat with the cigar and the slow, sideways-snapping hand - crazy!

Criminally short, but what there is is fantastic. Some might argue that it's almost adorably naive, presenting some of the century's most important musicians as if it were just a small-town gathering... but then that's what it is, and you can't always see history from the present. And if I were to be frozen in time, a hot summer day in 1959 with Monk on stage seems about right.