Words by Eric Hillis
Young & Innocent (1937)
The best, but most under-rated, of Hitchcock's British movies features a villain who happens to be a jazz drummer. This is revealed in one of Hitch's most memorable shots as the camera slowly tracks into a close-up of the blacked up killer as he keeps the beat during a performance of a song cheekily titled 'The Drummer Man'.
Ship Ahoy (1942)
Eleanor Powell is a dancer with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in this musical comedy. The drummer for the orchestra is no less than Buddy Rich, the idol of Miles Teller's character in Whiplash, and he gets to display his talents in a breakneck solo here. Watch out for a young singer by the name of Frank Sinatra; he's not half bad either.
The Gene Krupa Story (1959)
Sal Mineo portrays Jazz's most iconic drummer in this melodramatic biopic. The movie focusses on Krupa's early dilemma of whether to choose music or the priesthood and his later career self destruction, but it's got some great musical sequences. Krupa himself plays on the movie's soundtrack, overdubbing Mineo's 'miming'.
Round Midnight (1986)
Based loosely on the friendship between French writer Francis Paudras and American pianist Bud Powell, Bertrand Tavernier's film is one of the finest movies ever made about music, but sadly under viewed. The scene in which Francois Cluzet's jazz lover crouches in the Parisian rain to hear the music emanating from a basement jazz club nails the effect great music can have on us.
Kansas City (1996)
Robert Altman's depression era thriller is a love letter to his home town and the jazz clubs that made it famous. Altman assembled a super-group of the finest jazz musicians of the day to portray their '30s equivalents and the result is one of cinema's most rousing soundtracks.