It is perhaps telling that the two greatest non - American jazz musicians(Django Reinhardt and Michel Petrucciani)were both French because of all the European nations,France was the quickest to "get" jazz and recognise its validity as an art form,laud and give sanctuary to it's black pioneers.Certainly up until the early 1960s racism was fairly rare in France and many black musicians with international reputations took up residence in that country,happy to leave "Jim Crow" behind.From the mid 1930s there was a twenty year ban imposed by the Musicians' Union against American jazz musicians playing in the UK. Ludicrous when you consider that 20 miles away some of the best of them were performing every night. So when Dale Turner(Mr Dexter Gordon) begins his self-imposed exile in Paris he is following a well - established trail. A compassionate,sensitive and intelligent man,Turner has addiction issues that he is trying to address,but working in clubs is not the best environment for someone with his problems. But,above all,Turner has a God - given gift for playing the saxophone. Tired and worn out as he is,he is still capable of making music of great beauty.Respected by fellow musicians and revered by his admirers,"Round Midnight" tells of Turner's stay in Paris,and is a movie that loves jazz and loves the people who play jazz. Mr Dexter Gordon slips seamlessly into the Dale Turner persona,never quite drunk,never quite sober;in the end only wanting to play his saxophone,his whole life encapsulated in notes that sometimes seem to be more than mere music.He is clearly not acting,this is himself brutally exposed,a man almost but not quite beaten by life. People who love him try to save him from himself,but he is determined to go his own way.Jazz musicians do not,as a rule,have easy lives. Constant touring,at the mercy of different rhythm sections every night, always the "fan" with a connection...........it is not a recipe for longevity.In the end Dale Turner returns to America,reverts to drug use and dies soon after.Whether he would have survived had he stayed in Paris is problematic.I think in the final analysis it was just his time."Round Midnight"is very sad yet it celebrates the most life-affirming form of music on earth.Mr Gordon made an album for Blue Note entitled "Our Man In Paris";in it you will hear Long Tall Dexter at his muscular best,far different from the slightly halting playing of his later years. Never mind the moon landings,never mind the Internet or Henry Ford or Bill Gates,jazz is America's greatest gift to the world."Round Midnight" is France's way of saying "Thank you".

Jazz and blues are probably the two types of music that are truly native to the United States, at least since the US got established. Due to the racism here, both types of music found larger audiences outside the country (note how it was often British rock bands who reintroduced US audiences to the blues singers previously ignored in the US).

Bertrand Tavernier's Oscar-winning "Round Midnight" is a fictionalized look at a bebop musician seeking his fortune in 1950s Paris. It looks like a hard life. This is the sort of deliberately slow-moving picture that will appeal to jazz fans more than anyone. The music is among the best that cinema has to offer. Not a masterpiece, but you gotta love the soundtrack. Watch the movie for that, if nothing else.

'Round Midnight (1986)

If you love jazz, and especially if you love bebop and the 1940s and 50s music carried on by the real Dexter Gordon (who stars here),you ought to like this movie a lot. Or at least like and love the music.

And the music is great, with Herbie Hancock taking the Oscar that year for original score. Gordon is excellent, too, playing the fictional character, Dale Turner, not so different from his real life, as Gordon lived in Paris for years because the jazz scene was still alive there for him. The movie is based on a book loosely based on two earlier jazzmen, however: the great and troubled Bud Powell who played piano and of course the legendary Lester Young who played, like Dale Turner, the tenor sax.

And so do I, sort of. I love this stuff, the music and even the lore a bit, the individuals that make up that fifty years or so of classic jazz.

But the music is not entirely the movie. As a plot, a series of meaningful events and conversations, this is meandering (which can be wonderful in a better film) and sometimes poorly acted and poorly written. It's full of stupid clichés, frankly. And in fact it seems like what it probably is: an outsider's rosy-eyed vision of the American jazz scene as it was transplanted in Paris. It's filled with inevitable smoky rooms, quirky characters, tough but marginalized woman, alcoholic men, and dark nights. I'm sure that's accurate in the outline, but it comes off as naive and pre-packaged. Add the final element, that the music is played for a bunch of White Europeans who really love it but don't actually get it (sorry to say) the way it was "gotten" here in America, or was back in the day. It all rings false. Increasingly.

I'd love to know what other insider jazz people think of this portrayal. Watching the Ken Burns documentary of jazz series with all the clips and comments gives another kind of false view, aggrandizing as it is, but is has all the elements of truth built in to know something of the honesty and difficulty of the scene in the States. Director and writer Bertrand Tavernier is trying something noble, and probably coming from a love of jazz, but it's almost unwatchable as a movie.

In fact, it's almost insulting with all the clichés—the troubled French man who loves it all in a wide-eyed way and is supposed to show a rare empathy for the poor unappreciated Americans at the top. And that's the core of the movie. He says, more than once in different ways, "Your music changed my life." Yeah, yeah, of course! That's still not going to fill two hours on the screen.

Take these comments with some salt—the movie got lots of nominations for awards. And Dexter Gordon is terrific in his acting (if not always his somewhat stiff playing),which is a kind of revelation. And it might be enjoyable for the lack of glitz here, for all the quiet (a.k.a. boring for some) conversations. You'll get the feel in the first twenty minutes.

And love the music. That's a good full half of this troubled movie.