I suppose I have to give this movie an '8' because I appreciate the effort and the fact that I found it very entertaining and moody. I found this little gem in the video store and I'm glad I saw it. Yes, it's obscure, but it's worthwhile for a rainy evening's entertainment.
Harry (James Wilder) is a saxophone player in a small jazz combo that plays in a New York jazz club. The atmosphere of the jazz club is exquisitely rendered and the music is superb. I don't know if Wilder is actually a saxophone player, I couldn't tell if he was actually playing, but his portrait of the musician is spot on. The art of jazz is celebrated here. This what I liked best about this film. The music and the ambiance suggests loneliness of the great metropolis and of lost chances. Harry and his wife Julie are having problems of trust. Things go unspoken between them. At this point a mythological element enters the picture. Some ancient feminine spirit is driving lonely men mad manifesting as a disembodied voice on the radio, a female DJ with a smooth sexy voice who plays jazz late in the night. The keyboard player in the combo falls in love with the radio voice.
Harry's wife Julie realizes she's having to battle archetypical mythological spirits for the soul of her husband, and her own as well. I won't give it away. I am pleased when any movie takes note of mythological forces even in a low-budget film like this. At one time civilization had coherent mythologies as a guide to psychological understanding. Now we're left with an degraded psychology where pharmaceuticals are the first and last resort to treat anxiety and depression. This leaves us at the mercy of mythological forces which, because they're so poorly understood, are extremely dangerous. Psychology was once informed by mythology, (think of Freud and Jung), now it has been reduced to a pill a day to keep the blues away.
This is not a great film, but it has a wonderful ambiance. I'd hate to see it just be lost in the caverns of time. I think it's worth viewing.
