Young Man With A Horn

Young Man With A Horn
Originally uploaded by livingfilm.

Young man with a Horn is kind of a failure of a film. I mean, it is beautifully made with very capable performances by the cast of Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day and the always perfect Hoagy Carmicheal, yet the film itself was a contradiction of the what the film was actually about, or rather it is a perfect example of what the film tries to condemn. Let me explain.

Based on the Dorothy Baker novel, that was loosely based on the tragic life of legendary jazz trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, Young Man follows the life of Rick Martin (Kirk Douglas) through his childhood and discovery and prodigal abilities as a jazz trumpeter.

We are actually told the story of the film by the narrator 'Smoke' Willoughby (Hoagy Carmicheal) -actually Carmicheal was a good friend of Bix Beiderbecke which makes sense of his being cast in this film, yet I am curious to think about how he felt about the finished product.

We first meet Rick Martin as a boy of 10, and we learn that both parents have died (actually his father might not have died, but we are told he "never knew his Father"), and he is left to be raised (and neglected) by his adult sister. Wandering around at night young Rick comes across a homeless shelter run by the church, and is drawn in by the hymns being sung by the people inside, with the accompaniment of a piano. Rick sneaks in while the meal is being served to the poor, to play the piano. We are told by Hoagy Carmicheal's narration that the legend is that Rick taught himself how to play the piano that night. After being kicked out of the church for disturbing the visitors, Rick stumbles across a jazz joint, and listens to the musicians jam. His interest in music endears him to the musicians in particular virtuoso trumpeter Art Hazzard (Juano Hernandez) who takes Rick under his wing and teaches him how to play trumpet.

We meet Rick again, now as an adult, playing music in dance-halls and carnivals to make a living, while playing soulful Jazz in his free time. The popular tastes in music have changed. Mediocrity is King. Rick's mentor Art is now finding work harder to come by, and his talent rendered meaningless in a world where as Art puts it "People don't care about music anymore....They buy records to learn the words". Rick learns this first hand when he is reprimanded by his band leader for playing too expressively in his accompaniment to singer Jo Jordan (Doris Day). Rick is told to simply "Play the music as it is written" because the arrangements cost so much. Both Jo and 'Smoke' who recognize and admire Rick's talent, cannot prevent his continued acting out that result in his being fired from the band.

At about this time Jo brings her friend Amy North Lauren Bacall to hear Rick perform, in a club he now plays in. Amy is an intellectual who is studying to be a psychologist, who claims to have no interest in Jazz, but finds its followers to be interesting subjects. Rick falls in love with Amy, flattered that someone as smart as Amy is interested in him. Amy who's intellectual pretention covers her insecurity at her lack of talent and passion that seem to propel Rick. They soon marry, but quickly discover their relationship disintegrating.

Rick soon finds his life falling apart, and is caught in a downward spiral of destruction. That is the gist of things.

Now my problem is that this film though very skillfully made, lacks honesty and more importantly humanity. Rick is portrayed very two dimensionally, alternating between gifted artist and naive dreamer, and I don't blame Kirk Douglas for this, because he actually has it in him to give the depth this character needs, he is actually playing against type in this film, and that should have been to the films benefit, yet the script must have given him very little to work with. Douglas was usually cast as a bastard in most of his films, and I think that those aspects of Rick's character were sadly missing. Rick was too sympathetic, too Hollywoodized. He was like a gifted saint that just happened to be misunderstood, and could not help his life from falling apart. The rest of the characters in the film were fine, but this isn't their story.

I don't even think I can blame director Micheal Curtiz, who very gifted himself, was the Warner Bros. work horse director, and had turned countless of his studio assignments into classic films such as Casablanca, Mildred Pierce and The Sea Hawk to name only a slight few. And though this film is often very beautifully directed (and I might still recommend watching it, if only to see Hoagy Carmichael who is wonderful in this film), it lacks the passion that moves the character, and the ultimatly the force of this story.

Ironically you can't help but feel that Curtiz was forced to simply play the film as written.