Average Rating: 8.1/10
Reviews Counted: 18
Fresh: 18 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 8.3/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 2,240
A French music lover befriends a once-great American jazz artist and attempts to save him from self-destruction in this moody drama. Saxophonist Dexter Gordon portrays Dale Turner, a fictional musician inspired by a number of famed jazz figures, including Bud Powell and Lester Young. Largely forgotten in his home country, Turner has moved to Paris in search of a more appreciative audience. He finds it in the form of Francis Borler (Francois Cluzet), a bebop aficionado who befriends the
Sep 12, 1986 Wide
Jan 30, 2001
Warner Home Video
All Critics (18) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (20) | Rotten (0) | DVD (6)
Round Midnight is a superbly crafted music world drama in which Gallic director Bertrand Tavernier pays a moving dramatic tribute to the great black musicians who lived and performed in Paris in the late 1950s.
The director's perenially heavy mood seems especially well suited to this indigo-shaded story of a black American saxman (Dexter Gordon) living and performing in Paris in the late 50s.
No actor could do what the great jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon does in 'Round Midnight.
You do not need to know a lot about jazz to appreciate what is going on because, in a certain sense, this movie teaches you everything about jazz that you really need to know.
Gordon goes the limit as Turner, dedicating his performance to all the cats who've gone before.
A lovingly gentle yet vibrant tribute to jazz, friendship and film itself, made by a director of consummate taste and precise imagination.
Dexter Gordon received a Best Actor nomination and Herbie Hancock the Original Score Music Oscar for this moody jazz piece anout an alcoholic musician down on his luck.
He's not just writing about a dying old man, he's writing about jazz.
Tavernier's striking widescreen frame established the rainy, neon-and-smoke filled world of the jazz film.
One of the best jazz films ever made, this succeeds by melding French sensibilities about atmosphere with American sensibilities about the music.
Dale Turner, as played by Dexter Gordon, seems to be an amalgam of Bud Powell and Lester Young, but the private, rueful dignity that he brings to bear is all his own.
It's a brooding yet warm elegy, as plaintive as a slow, low-toned ballad in a minor key.
Sound is very important in Round Midnight, and the new Warner Brothers DVD takes its sound very seriously. With a remastered Dolby 5.1 soundtrack supervised by Hancock, the audio is powerful and flawless.
The film's quality lies not just in its vivid portrayal of the bebop milieu, but also in its sensitive examination of the turbulent forces within an artist compelled to create on a nightly basis, despite personal consequences.
Guided by the spirit of the art form it celebrates, Tavernier's film is a mesmerizing audio-visual lament for the impending death of jazz
One of the best jazz-focused films out there. Great music through-out the film and a great cast full of real-life jazz luminaries.
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