Film Recommendation: Kansas City

Robert Altman, the acclaimed director of films such as M*A*S*H*, Short Cuts, Nashville, and The Player, returned to the city of his youth to recreate a city teeming with vice, music, excitement, and danger. Kansas City in 1934, ruled by “Boss Tom” Pendergast’s Democratic political machine and John Lazia’s criminal syndicate, is a world of gambling, prostitution, hard drinking, political machinations, crime, and of course, jazz. The plot is set off when Johnny O’Hara a petty thief colludes with a Black cab driver to rip off a high-rolling gambler named Sheepshan. O’Hara disguises himself in blackface, but fails to consider Sheepshan’s close ties with the notorious and powerful Seldom Seen, the owner of the Hey-Hey Club, a jazz joint and gambling haven. Desperate to rescue Johnny, his wife Blondie kidnaps Carolyn Stilton, the laudanum-addicted wife of a powerful local politician, and plans to negotiate her husband’s release. While the melodramatic plot and the presense of Jennifer Jason Leigh may bug some of you, the suspenseful threat of violence and a real sense of tension are enough to hook you long enought to enjoy the film’s greatest asset: a vivid recreation of the period, accurate replication of the jazz sounds of the day, and its superb casting of contemporary musicians such as Joshua Redman and Craig Handy and James Carter to play the parts of Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Ben Webster respectively.

While much of the plot does center on the tough-talking Jean Harlow-idolizing Blondie and her attempts to bargain with Seldom, the most appealing scenes of the film are those that take place in the Hey-Hey Club. Altman makes use of many of the most significant figures of Kansas City’s golden age of jazz from Young and Hawkins to a piano player named Bill Basie, who of course later adopted the title of Count. An amusing small subplot involves a teenage saxophone player named Charlie who rescues a pregnant teenager and helps her find her way to a rest home for unwed girls. That young musician, we discover, is none other than Charlie “Bird” Parker, the great Bop revolutionary. While there are other elements that make the film worth recommending—the allusions to important historical figures like Marcus Garvey and President Roosevelt, the depiction of city politics and corruption, the dangers of drug use—there is one episode in particular that could be shown in isolation for those most interested in the music of the day. Identified as “Scene 12—Dueling Saxes,” this single scene presents an exciting jazz session complete rousing competition of soloists and is surely a highlight of the film.

Oh, and Harry Belafonte as Seldom Seen is pretty bad ass.