Les Blank, a fascinating individual and director of some remarkably personal documentaries
passed away
yesterday. I hardly have anything to say about him, at least worthy of
his long and adventurous career, since I knew his ouvre only
sporadically. However, I hope the stream of obituaries following his
death would serve the purpose of shedding light on the career of the
man "whose sly, sensuous and lyrical documentaries about regional music
and a host of other idiosyncratic subjects, including Mardi Gras,
gaptoothed women, garlic and the filmmaker Werner Herzog, were widely
admired by critics and other filmmakers if not widely known by
moviegoers."
Here, I'll draw your attention to one of
Blank's very early films, which happens to be one of the best jazz films
produced under the umbrella of independent, ciné-vérité movement of the
1960s. Les Blank made many films about music, including
The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins (1968), of course if one doesn't mention incorporating jazz and blues music in his non-musical films. During five tireless
decades of film-making, the portrait of Dizzy Gillespie stands out as
probably one of Blank's most accomplished cinematographic discovery of
music and musical ideas.
