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Night Waltz: The Music Of Paul Bowles

2001, Movie, NR, 80 mins

Night Waltz: The Music Of Paul Bowles: Review

NIGHT WALTZ: THE MUSIC OF PAUL BOWLES
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First-time filmmaker Owsley Brown's splendid documentary is the third film in five years to peer into the fascinating world of Paul Bowles: author, expatriate and spiritual forefather of the Beat generation. But Brown's film is the first to concentrate on Bowles's music, an important part of Bowles's career that's usually glossed over. Throughout the 1930s and '40s — long before moving to Tangier and establishing himself as a novelist with The Sheltering Sky — Bowles was an important part of New York City's musical avant garde. He wrote short, deceptively simple compositions that often accompanied cutting edge plays, ballets and films; Bowles scored many of Tennessee Williams's greatest successes, including The Glass Menagerie, as well as a number of productions for Orson Welles and John Houseman. Brown was fortunate enough to have gained access to Bowles shortly before his death in Morocco in 1999, and he lets the man himself — a marvelous, if frustratingly discreet storyteller — discuss the makings of his own musical career: an isolated childhood; a revelation upon hearing Stravinsky's Firebird at age 12; a brief visit to Paris and the salon of Gertrude Stein; study under the tutelage of Aaron Copland. Well into his 80s, Bowles was sharp and full of great reminiscences (the best involves Welles and a score Bowles composed for an aborted Mercury Theater production), but the real heart of the film is the music itself — try to imagine a combination of Erik Satie, Stravinsky and American jazz. And Brown showcases it beautifully. He sets a generous sampling of songs, nocturnes and piano pieces to a series of beautifully rendered "visual essays" — vintage footage of Manhattan culled from the work of the late independent filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt, which serves as the perfect visual counterpart to Bowles's charmingly modern sounds. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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