Jazz on a Summer's Day

In Jazz on a Summer's Day, a documentary of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival — the sole film by Bert Stern — the storied photographer multiplies pleasures by crossbreeding art forms. To watch, say, sailboats serenely shoot through Newport Bay as Thelonious Monk finds God on the piano is to have the (crisply remastered) image, the (supple Dolby) sound, and your soul all crazily enriched. Plus, there's lyrical observation of mid-20th-century Homo sapiens — some of them wearing polka-dotted dresses in the afternoon sun — and a thoughtful behind-the-scenes short, A Summer's Day With Bert Stern. A

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