Customer Reviews

Young Man With a Horn [VHS]

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The happy ending is clumsily tacked on and reeks "Hollywood" in the worst sense of the word. Otherwise this is another very good Michael Curtiz film with solid acting and great black and white cinematography. Kirk Douglas may surprise you as the obsessed jazzman, Rick Martin. Doris Day and Lauren Bacall are wonderful as the female leads (with Day being so definitively Day, and Bacall so quintessentially Bacall). Hoagy Carmichael is a remarkable screen presence as well. And the music is wonderful. So what's not to like?...well, the cornball ending and the (at times) stilted dialogue. Still well worth watching. And for jazz movie fans, fans of any or all of the stars or admirers of director Curtiz it remains a must have.

This movie is great! For anyone who loves jazz, or enjoys a good film, I would recommend purchasing this movie. The soundtrack to this movie is just phenomenal.(Played by trumpet ace Harry James) This movie will keep your foot tapping while the splendor of Kirk Douglas captures your attention. This movie is said to be based on the life of jazz cornetist Bix Biederbecke. You will find it to be a great performance that you can not turn away from while you are shown the life of a boy who grows up and makes it big as a remarkable trumpeter.

Yeah, it's pretty corny and about as cliche-ridden as they come, but the music is there and that's a very good thing. Kirk Douglas plays a young jazz trumpeter, based very loosly on the life of '20s cornetist and legend Bix Beiderbecke - a man in love with nothing but his horn (and booze) - until Doris Day turns him around. Lauren Bacall plays a vampire-type woman who takes out her own self-loathing on the world (and Douglas), but she does the only credible acting in the movie.

Hollywood has always simplified and cornballed the jazz world, rarely coming close to the reality of it, and this film is no exception. The happy ending is far-fetched and a real drag. Disappointing (but about as to be expected, everything considered). For jazz fans out there, Harry James was dubbed in playing the trumpet parts.

1. Made in 1950, this movie shows one view of the racial divides in the 1920s and 1930s in America, and how they crossed in one particular domain: Jazz. (Apparently, this movie is based on a novel which combined multiple real life characters into several of its leading characters.)

2. I thought the acting was excellent. Especially, Lauren Bacall, but also Kirk Douglas, Hoagy Carmichael and Doris Day. This isn't the way I normally think of either Douglas or Day, and was impressed by how well they performed in their rolls.

3. I thought the movie had a message. Maybe a rather "sappy" message, but a good one, and delivered with conviction.

Bix Beiderbecke was unquestionably one of the forerunners of so-called "hot jazz" that led to the golden era of this musical discipline. His career was short as was his life. This complex young man possessed a grand talent and was able, according to Hoagy Carmichael, to bring tears to those who were wedded to this new musical art form. Bix made his way from the Davenport, Iowa to places East, in the late 'teens of the century just passed. He had a significant impact on the evolution of "Chicago" jazz and his reputation was singular for the sweetness of his tone, and his ability to express what was in his soul.

His music peaked in the mid-to-late '20s, and he died from external excesses in 1931. His cornet was stilled, but his legend was vivid for many decades after he was gone. I would recommend reading the twin autobiographies (under a single cover) of Hoagy Carmichael both of which offer a sincere tribute to Bix and his impact on jazz without being smarmy.

The insinuation that the 1950 flic, "Young Man with a Horn", depicted Bix, just ain't so.

Michael Curtiz, who could direct just about any genre of film does it again. Episodic and musical events of a man( not Bix) obsessed with his horn. Any film with a duet between Hoagy and Kirk has to be fun.

Watch for Jerome Cowan as the band leader and of course another fine turn of acting from Juano Hernandez ( Art Hazzard) Day sings, Bacall broods and I do believe I saw what looked like an el!

I was struck watching it this time around with how very much the racial politics of Dorothy Baker's roman a clef are present in Curtiz' version of the story. Well, as it happens the movie was written by Carl Foreman, the left-leaning screenwriter, soon to be blacklisted, who was responsible a few years earlier for HOME OF THE BRAVE, the first Hollywood film to delve seriously into the problems of the black soldier and vet, the film that made a star out of James Edwards.

In YOUNG MAN, white trumpeter Rick Martin's nightly pilgrimage to "GALBA'S" club is almost an obsession with him, obviously he is there to somehow suck up the black jazzmen's talent for improvisation and, for lack of a better word, you might call "soul." Every night he's there, for hours, after his own shift gets off at 1:00 a.m., and sometimes they invite him up with jam with them. It's during one of these late night sessions that he delivers a heart stopping, angel-sweet version of Richard Rodger's luscious "WITH A SONG IN MY HEART." He's framed in a black and white composition with lustrous grays glinting up and down the trumpet, courtesy of the insanely talented cinematographer Ted McCord, who did so many of the Warner Brothers noir-tinged features, everything from FLAMINGO ROAD to JUHNNY BELINDA. Juano Hernandez is the black jazz master Art Hazzard, who plays the hidden idol of both Kirk Douglas' and Doris Day's character. When they watch him play in the nightclub, a conventional set without his usual fire, the disappointment, bewilderment and realizations in their gaze show us so much about race relations in the USA in the quick-moving postwar era. Hernandez was on a roll in 1950, fresh from his triumph in Clarence Brown's INTRUDER IN THE DUST, this Curtiz film was but one of three movies he made this year! And soon, for Juano Hernandez too, the so-called "gray-list" would remove him from cinema screens for years to come: too uppity, too independent, too ethnic, too righteous. Check out his portrayal of Hazzard in this film, it is a corker.

YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN is a mood picture, and Kirk Douglas is up for the challenge. It's nearly a tone poem of difficult relations between humans--Kirk's guilt, Doris' sudden and embarrassing desire for him, Lauren Bacall's rich, affluent, smorgasbord sexual preference games. It has something for everyone, if you've got nothing to lose and the sky over your head has lost its stars.

This is Douglas' picture most of the way with kudos being thrown to Doris Day for her talented acting and singing. The cinematography is perfect 40ish film noirish and the music is incredible. I wish I had access to the soundtrack!! This is one movie that did not disappoint me. Most fun scene to watch: Lauren Bacall as she breaks Kirk Douglas' 78 records!! Most Memorable song: Doris Day's version of "With a Song in My Heart" and the ending still packs a wallop! I won't give it away...you'll have to buy this fine video and see for yourself!

I think that the major thing wrong with this movie
is that it confuses people about jazz without giving them any idea
what jazz really is. The idea was to make a drama about a man
eaten up by his life in the jazz world.
I suppose that the "product" like Lust for Life
is more important than what people learn from it?
Don't be fooled: this movie has very little to do with real jazz
and the people who play it and love it.
The movie is a product made to sell movies starring popular actors.
There is actually some pretty good jazz from the 50's
and some big band tunes.
I liked the movie when I saw it as a kid, but now,
after actually learning about the music, the movie seem
really barren and empty.

Any film starring the great Kirk Douglas is usually good and often great. YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN is no exception. Douglas does an o.k. job portraying the pseudo Bix Beiderbecke character, Rick Martin, but he just can't mimic a trumpet player that well (lip positions,breathing, [...] etc.) The film follows a typical Hollywood mellodrama style, a guy struggling, succeeding, descending into personal demons and then rescue by a gal or a self realiztion. The real star of this film is the brilliant soundtrack by the incomparable Harry James with the equally brilliant Doris Day handling the vocals. I am now waiting for a good biofilm of Harry James as his life covered all the aspects of a rags to riches drama in addition to some of the best music ever recorded.