From the rushes of an interview led by the musician Henri Renaud, the filmmaker Alain Gomis dismantles the stereotypes in which the black pianist was locked up.
by Clarisse Fabre
Rewind and Play, by Alain Gomis, is a documentary that was not planned for the program, and it is sometimes in these moments of chance that the most unexpected stories invent. The Franco-Senegalese director (Félicité, 2017) has been preparing for some time a fiction on the great American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk (1917-1982). To support their research, he and his documentary maker, Olivier Rignault, request archive documents with the National Audiovisual Institute.
Among the images sent, the television program “Jazz Portrait” is produced in 1969. But, surprised, are added rushes lasting two hours, a sort of end to end of the show. She is hosted by the jazz pianist Henri Renaud (1925-2002): sincere admirer of Monk, a black pianist who was long underflined before knowing success in the late 1950s, he nevertheless was clumsy with his guest . Shorts accumulate that end up making you uncomfortable.
By reworking these rushs in a tightened and nervous feature film (1 h 05), installing a certain tension, Alain Gomis gives a space to Thelonious Monk, showing how he tries to resist his interlocutor. The film opens with the arrival of the pianist and his wife, Nellie, in Paris, on December 15, 1969, for a concert in the Pleyel hall. Monk has been chaining tours for ten years. It is rather reserved, pulls on his cigarette …
“I do not understand your question”
The assembly shows the maintenance factory, in a Montmartre recording studio: while Monk plays Crepuscule with Nellie (1957), Henri Renaud, who rubbed shoulders with the couple in 1954, in New York, asks to Monk to say something about Nellie. “She is my wife and the mother of my children,” says the pianist, a little surprised. Then comes the big business: at the time when the Monk lived in a cramped apartment in New York, only the kitchen was spacious, and it was in this place that the piano was installed! Monk confirms, without adding. Its strength is in this restraint, but under the lamps of the studio, sweat begins to pear up on its forehead.
Then Henri Renaud evokes the first concert that Monk gave in Paris, in 1954, Salle Pleyel. No doubt her music was too avant-garde for the French public, he suggests. “I don’t understand your question,” said Monk, recalling that he was doing the “one” of a jazz magazine announcing the concert. On the other hand, he had no musicians to accompany him on stage, he deplores. “Finally, I had guys to play with me and I was the least well paid for everyone. This is what happened.”
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