23. Sultans of Swing &...

Lyrics

You get a shiver in the dark
It's a rainin' in the park, but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything
A band is blowin' Dixie double four time
You feel alright when you hear the music ring...

And now you step inside but you don't see too many faces
Comin' in out of the rain to hear the jazz go down
Competition in other places...
Oh but the horns they blowin' that sound
Way on down south, way on down south London town

You check out Guitar George, he knows all the chords
But he's strictly rhythm he doesn't wanna make it cry or sing
They've said an old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing

And Harry doesn't mind, if he doesn't make the scene
He's got a daytime job, he's doin' alright
He can play the honky tonk like anything
Savin' it up, Friday night...
With the Sultans... with the Sultans of Swing

And a crowd of young boys they're fooling around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles
They don't give a damn 'bout any trumpet playing band
It ain't what they call rock and roll
And the Sultans... yeah the Sultans, they play Creole

Creole baby

Uh huh

And then the man he steps right up to the microphone
And says at last just as the time bell rings
'Goodnight, now it's time to go home'
And he makes it fast with one more thing
'We are the Sultans... We are the Sultans of Swing'


It is impossible to listen to this song without a smile on your face, it is so joyous and fun. I had never seen the clip before, but in combination with it the song is even better. You can sense the joy and effortlessness with which Mark Knopfler performs it. When I was little I really liked the fact that in their first single the Dire Straits had the audacity to proclaim that they were 'the sultans of swing.' And I still find it quite marvelous what an incredibly confident first single this is. I am sure the Dire Straits had some doubts about whether they would 'make it' or about what their sound would be, but based on this song you wouldn't believe that. It feels like a song made by a very experienced band that knows exactly what it's doing.
I couldn't really find a movie about the jazz scene or a jazz club in London, so I chose a movie about the happenings inside a jazz(-like) club in Harlem in the 1920's. Though after writing this paragraph I now realize that this would have been a good opportunity to finally see Citizen Kane, which is obviously (seen as) a very confident movie by a first-time director. Anyway, that will have to wait.

The Movie: The Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola, 1984)

Seeing Citizen Kane would have probably been more interesting. This movie was quite a disappointment. Before this I hadn't seen anything by Coppola besides his first two Godfather films. But I felt that they, especially the second one, had absolutely earned their reputation. Besides this, The Cotton Club had a very interesting cast and seemed to have an interesting mix of gangsters and music. So I was quite surprised that I enjoyed it so little The movie feels like one of Woody Allen's films in which he romanticizes a certain period and mixes fantasy with reality. Radio Days and Midnight in Paris are good examples of it. Unfortunately The Cotton Club lacks the wit and charm of Allen's movies. Coppola has admittedly taken great care of the look of the movie. The sets and costumes are all meticulously thought out and constructed. We get lots of shots of musicians dancing in the bright spotlight and lots of shots of gangsters sitting in the dark with only their face lit up. But the movie doesn't really do anything with this. There aren't many memorable or interesting scenes, the plot is cliched, a bit predictable and doesn't really go anywhere and most of the characters are rather flat and undeveloped

The movie focuses mostly on the gangsters that run the Cotton Club and the black musicians that perform in it. But these are mostly treated as two separate entities. It would have been more interesting if the story lines of the gangsters and the musicians intertwined a bit more. Now the movie often feels as two shorter movies that happen to happen at the exact same place. In one storyline we follow Richard Gere's Dixie Dwyer an aspiring musician who can't play in the Cotton Club, because only blacks are allowed to play there. (Though in a nicely ironic touch blacks aren't allowed to be in attendance there. They are only allowed entrance if they are musicians). Due to a series of coincidences Dixie has to work for the feared gangster Dutch. Dixie has to entertain Dutch's mistress Vera when Dutch has 'work' to do. Naturally Dixie and Vera fall in love with each other. In the other story we follow Gregory Hines' Sandman Williams who, together with his (real-life) brother tries to make it as a tap dancer in The Cotton Club. Sandman also hopes to woo Lila, a mulatto woman also performing in The Cotton Club. There is not much of narrative advancement in both of these stories. Dixie and Vera halfheartedly flirt, knowing that they don't have much chance at a future together. Dutch sees them and threatens them. They oblige him and after a couple of scenes the same thing happens all over again. It is also never made clear why Dutch would go to so much trouble for Vera. We never actually see him enjoy her company or do anything but fight with her. She is more a burden for him. And in the case of Hines, we see him tap dancing a bit, then we see him unsuccessfully wooing Lila a bit, then he tap dances again, etc. The two most interesting characters in the movie are Cotton Club's owner Owney Madden and his bodyguard Frenchy. They have a surprising friendly relationship and have mutual respect for each other. The scene when they meet after Frenchy has been kidnapped and Owney has paid the ransom money starts of tense, but leads to a surprising confirmation of their friendship. It is by far the best scene of the movie.

There is another reason why this mixing of gangsters and music didn't work. The gangster's plot is played straight and for dramatic effect. Only this drama is often undercut because after a killing there is often a cut straight away to a scene with joyous jazz music. Or sometimes we hear this joyous jazz music on the soundtrack, while we watch a dramatic gangster scene. This doesn't really work and often makes this gangster scenes feel a bit like a parody of gangster scenes. This clearly wasn't Coppola's intent. Now, I have to make clear that I am not saying that you can never put joyous music on the soundtrack while showing horrific things. After all, in my previous post I wrote about the greatness of Pulp Fiction. But in The Cotton Club it doesn't work and feels careless.

What I did like about The Cotton Club is its cynicism. All its characters have norms, values and ideals. But they are all very willing to let go of them, if by doing so they can achieve personal gain. They don't agree with the unfair rules of the society they belong to, but know that if they obey this rules their lives will be better. There aren't many (Hollywood) films that portrait their characters in such a way. Dixie may love Vera, but it's much better and more fruitful for him to stay on good terms with Dutch. And Dixie also cares deeply about his brother Vincent, played by a young Nicolas Cage, but he cares much more about being a movie star. So when Owney kills Vincent, Dixie doesn't do much to stop him and even helps Owney a bit. After all it is Owney who brought Vincent to Hollywood and who makes him a star. Vera on the other hand also loves Dixie and hates Dutch, but by staying with Dutch she hopes she'll get her own jazz club. She eventually does. Lastly the black musicians don't agree with the fact that other blacks aren't allowed to enter The Cotton Club. But despite it, they have no problem performing in it. They know it is their best chance for a good life with money and fame.

This is too a pretty good scene