Sweet and Lowdown

A film set in America in the 1930s. Emmet Ray is a jazz guitarist. By his own account the second best in the world; the first lives in Europe and Emmet faints at the sound of his name. He is good on stage. Off it he is a disaster; he steals, gambles, drinks, and is loyal to nobody. In his spare time he does two things. He shoots rats at the dump and watches trains. One day he meets Hattie. She works in a laundry and cannot speak. Emmet takes up with her. Hattie asks for nothing, wants to know nothing, and accepts him as he is. Emmet cannot carry it. He leaves her and marries a writer. From there the film becomes a story of loss. Touring, recordings, a swindle, a separation and an attempt to return. What the narrative is interested in is not music but flight: Emmet deliberately wrecks his only real relationship because feeling something frightens him. The form is mock documentary. The narrative stops now and then for passages in which real music critics talk about Emmet to camera, and they appear under their own names. The man never existed. Emmet Ray is entirely invented and the film builds him as a legend. Hattie never speaks. Samantha Morton carries the whole part with a performance out of silent cinema, and it is the film's strongest element. The guitar recordings are by Howard Alden; Sean Penn worked on the fingering with him. Both leads were nominated for Academy Awards. Sean Penn, Samantha Morton, Uma Thurman and Anthony LaPaglia are in the cast. Woody Allen wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes the music of the jazz era and the mock documentary form. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot carry the main character; Emmet is unpleasant throughout and the film gives him no redemption.