'Round Midnight

Bertrand Tavernier's 'Round Midnight is a superlative elegy, a bluesy, melancholy movie dedicated to expatriate jazzmen Bud Powell and Lester Young. It captures the essence of their music, moving with the smokey, meandering rhythms of bebop. [03 Feb 1987, p.3D]

The screenplay, by Mr. Tavernier and David Rayfiel, is both rich and relaxed, with a style that perfectly matches the musicians'. Some of the talk may well be improvised, but nothing sounds improvised, but nothing sounds forced, and the film remains effortlessly idiosyncratic all the way through.

Gordon’s remarkable as the emotionally disarranged, psychologically disintegrating jazzman, and when the little Frenchman calls him a genius, you suddenly realize what that overused term implies: not moral worthiness or superior personhood but a giftedness beyond accounting that hardly belongs to character at all.

It isn't much to say that "Round Midnight" is the best jazz film ever made (there's so little competition), but it's true. Tavernier has an impeccable feel for how the music is played and--more important--why it is played. [24 Oct 1986, p.A]

The film reeks of the authentic stuff of jazz, smoky with atmosphere and all as blue as a Gauloise packet.

Jazz music is a state of mind in Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 film ’Round Midnight.

Round Midnight is too long and too slow. [25 Jun 1987]