Can you listen to Chet Baker and not fall in love? It seems improbable. The trumpeter rose to fame in the 1950s with his languid, cool jazz and broken hearted vocal stylings (it didn’t hurt that he looked like Jimmy Dean). Legend has it that Charlie Parker heard him and called Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie to alert them to the new competition. Baker’s career fizzled out in years of heroin addiction, until the point, near the end of his life, when he was tracked down by photographer Bruce Weber—who documented his last tour and put old Chet up against archives. The film is achingly tender, steeped in beautiful music and black and white photography; a love letter to a lost soul.
Chet Baker is my favourite vocalist of the [20th] century… he’s the only singer I’ve ever been able to identify with. I love the fact he’s so expressive, so overemotional. It’s classic stuff; it makes me soft in my knees… He was so into it: like, ’Fuck those notes I’m singing, and fuck those songs I’m singing – what I want is the emotion.’ That’s how I feel about it too.
Björk
The finest jazz movie ever made.
David Parkinson, Empire Magazine
A gorgeous gravestone for the Beat Generation’s legacy of beautiful-loser chic.
Jim Ridley, The Village Voice
Bruce Weber
Chet Baker, William Claxton
USA
1988
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Also Playing
Inedia
Liz Cairns makes a mesmerizing feature debut that sees a young woman suffering from mysterious food allergies join a remote island community practicing alternative healing methods. She soon realizes that not everything is as it seems.
Drop Dead City
New York, 1975. The city is minutes away from bankruptcy and President Gerald Ford wants no part of it. Sanitation workers are on strike and cops are telling tourists it's not safe to visit. The town is going up in flames and they can't pay the firemen.
Super Happy Forever
This beguiling film depicts a man’s return to the Japanese seaside town where he met his now-deceased wife five years earlier. He tries to relive the past, and in the film's final section -- a flashback to 2018 -- the audience is afforded that privilege.