# Sweet and Lowdown (1999)

### reviewed by
Dennis Schwartz

SWEET AND LOWDOWN (director/writer:Woody Allen; cinematographer: Zhao Fei; cast: Sean Penn (Emmet Ray), Samantha Morton (Hattie), Uma Thurman (Blanche), Anthony LaPaglia (Al Torrio), Brian Markinson (Bill Shields), Gretchen Mol (Ellie), Vincent Guastaferro (Sid Bishop), James Urbaniak (Harry), John Waters (Club Owner, Mr. Haynes), Nat Hentoff (Himself), (1999)

    Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A very pleasing rendition of a Woody Allen film, directed and written by Woody. It is a fictional docudrama that smacks of Woody's playfulness and love for jazz, and his inability to tell a straight story, but his great ability to tell a very personal one, which in this case is a very suitable way of telling it. The film, also, is in many ways, a homage to Woody's favorite directors, Fellini and Bergman, both of whom he is obsessed with, just like the Sean Penn character is obsessed with a fellow musician, Django Reinhardt, in the film.

The film also has the good sense to reach for Woody's unique wit to get it through a few dry spells in the story. The joke that made me laugh the loudest, was when Sean was bawling the girls out whom he pimped for about not bringing back enough money for him that night and they tell him, what do you expect, it's a Jewish holiday! It was the timing and the facial expressions seen on Sean Penn that made those kind of jokes work.

Casting Sean Penn in the lead as the fictional, flamboyant jazz guitarist, Emmet Ray, was undoubtedly a wise choice on Woody's part, as he fits the role remarkably well, playing the second-best jazz guitar player in the swing world of the 1930s, who was also a pimp, drunk, egomaniac, wastrel, kleptomaniac, womanizer, and oddball, besides actually being a great artist. He explains all his moral deficiencies away, by saying, he is an "artist."

There are some marvelous Sean Penn jazz riffs on the guitar dubbed in by Howard Alden and some musical scores updated from the work of Django Reinhardt by Bucky Pizzarelli. The music was just beautiful to listen to and was played often enough during the course of the film, which should be pleasing to the aficionados of jazz.

To highlight his story with an air of authenthicity, Woody uses a number of experts on jazz to drily add information on the life of the invented second-greatest guitarist in the world, Emmet Ray, whose awe for Django Reinhardt, the French Gypsy guitarist, whom he considers to be the greatest player in the world, borders on hysteria, as the only two times he met him, he fainted. One such expert is the current writer for the Village Voice, Nat Hentoff, who plays himself.

The film relies on the quirkiness of Penn's performance to tell its lighthearted tale in a mock tone of seriousness, which captures the flavor of that period. It also tells of how as an artist he is a natural; he just knows how to play and has a certain grace to him when he plays, but when he is away from his music, he is a born loser and a braggart, messing up his life because he is a shell of a human being, afraid to fall in love or talk in earnest about himself, instead always showing off that he can throw any woman aside. His other peculiarity is to dress outlandishly in outfits that you need to wear sunglasses to kill all the glare coming from them. He also has a Hitler-like mustache, that looks comical on him, making his very expressive facial features flash with moods of sadness and a zany mischieve in his eyes. He is not really a good fellow away from his mistress, the guitar; he is much too self-absorbed to care a lick about someone else. His hobbies include, stealing knick-knacks, watching the trains go by and shooting rats in the town dumps.

What changes his life for awhile and should have made him a happy man, but turned out in the end to be just another mess up in his life, is his relationship with the mute laundress he picked-up on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, Hattie (Samantha), who looks like the silent screen star Mabel Normand. She has a heart of gold and offers him her unconditional love. Her pantomine acting was in the best tradition of silent movies, as through her expressive facial gestures all the emotions she was feeling at the time were clearly seen; all the long- sufferings that she has gone through. She also has a most pleasing smile, that anyone could understand. She is a physical person, loving to eat, have sex, and listen to his music; and, that she can hear, means that she also has to hear all the crude remarks directed at her by Emmet, who cannot open himself up to how he truly feels, but has to put her down constantly. What he is good at, besides playing the guitar, is foolishly spending money and living without a concept of how he is living. If he sees a flashy car that he likes, he only knows that he wants to buy it. When his manager Sid Bishop (Guastaferro) tells him he can't keep spending money he doesn't have and puts him on an allowance, he still tells Sid that he wants the car and can save the money, he will do that by telling Hattie to cut out desserts.

Eventually dumping Hattie, like he has done to all his other women, he meets a socialite hussy, in need of inspiration from the artist, by the name of Blanche (Uma), who thinks of herself as a writer, always questioning the inarticulate artist about what he is thinking about when he is performing. On a whim, he marries her and their doomed marriage goes downhill when the unreliable Emmet loses his latest gig because he doesn't show up and she starts an affair with a gangster (LaPaglia), the bodyguard for the nightclub owner who fired him. When Emmet trails them to follow up on the gossip he hears that his wife is having an affair, several versions are told through the stories the jazz experts heard. All the stories are so far apart, that none of the ridiculous versions could be verified by any of the experts, but what all the stories have in common, is that he hid in the backseat of the gangster's car and heard for sure that they were having an affair.

In the end there is pathos, as Emmet is left alone, not understanding what he had until Hattie left his life for good and he was unable to make real contact with another woman. The woman he loved and who loved him, couldn't result in a happy relationship because he was so full of hubris. That he, at least, realizes this, doesn't make him a happier person, it is too late for that, but the jazz experts tell us that he became a better musician, able to put more of his feelings into the music. Though they have no more stories to tell about him; he seemed to disappear off the face of the world.

Woody's film is an appealing look back at that age of swing music and maybe a composite glimpse of how some jazzmen lived their lives. The great music played incudes the following renditions: "Sweet Sue," "All of Me," "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" and "I'll See You in My Dreams." It also brings to the greater public's attention a real legend in guitar music, Django Reinhardt, the gypsy jazz guitarist from the Paris of the 1930s-1950s; he played a great guitar despite having lost his fingers in a childhood accident.

    REVIEWED ON 2/4/2000       GRADE: B

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

    http://www.sover.net/~ozus

    ozus@sover.net

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ

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