The film shows Bolden’s memories of his mother working on clothes. He shows him when he plays freestyle jazz with his band when he enters the scene of the nightclub and falls in love. He then enters the world of drugs, health problems and the deception of that love of his life. Scenes are almost always accompanied by music and dancers.
Like Roy Scheider in “All That Jazz,” Gary Carr has to score the right notes like Bolden. This ranges from its first signs of loss of control. In a surprising case, Ian McShane appears as a racist judge who is bent on Bolden in his office.
Memories from childhood and early career are either discolored, depending on the scene.
The story of the life of Buddy Bolden, famous trumpet player in the New Orleans of the early 1900s, forced to abandon music following a diagnosis of schizophrenia.