Bruce Weber’s documentary scrapbook on the life of jazz singer and trumpeter (and heart-throb) Chet Baker. The filmmaker (whose Broken Noses was about the boxer and Chet Baker look-alike, Andy Minsker) has a lot of material, some of it quite rare, but he hasn’t a lot of angles on it. The predominant one seems to be a morbid horror at the man’s physical decay: from looking like the lead in a 1950s j.d. drama to looking like a grizzled bit-player in a cattle-drive Western; or in the actual words of those who knew him, from “Greek god” to common “junkie.” His (monotonous) music, heard mostly in snippets, is almost incidental in this context. But the widely varied black-and-white imagery — ranging from the glossiest and highest-contrast to the grainiest and grayest — evokes all the nostalgia required. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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