“Young Man With a Horn” (1950)

Young Man With a Horn

Grade: B

Young Man With a Horn is a smooth, well-acted, unfortunately contrived biopic about an alcoholic jazzman that is entertaining in its first hour but ditches interesting musical insights for shallow romantic stereotypes in its second.

Directing:

Hungarian-born Hollywood filmmaker Michael Curtiz knows his way around a music biopic, proving first in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and again in Young Man With a Horn that a workmanlike pace is the best way to tell a life’s story, with seamless montage transitions that keep the drama moving. No one handles time skips better.

Acting:

Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall — and even Hoagy Carmichael and Doris Day — aren’t the first names that come to mind when I think of jazz, but Young Man With a Horn boasts a talented cast nonetheless, all delivering good performances even when their characterizations fall flat.

Writing:

The film’s first half is nice and compact, telling a streamlined story of a passionate jazzman’s rise to small-time fame, from childhood to early adulthood. But the second half is messy, relying on stereotypical tropes, thinly written romance and broad generalizations about alcoholism and musical ambition to arrive at its predetermined conclusion, unfairly blaming Rick Martin’s (Douglas) decline on the lesbian wife (Bacall) who introduced him to whiskey.

Music:

Douglas doesn’t play the trumpet; his solo scenes are dubbed over by big band leader Harry James, whose breezy professional playing will satisfy jazz fans, particularly Swing Era connoisseurs, with powerful musical moments that transcend the film’s trite drama.

Ending (SPOILERS):

The movie biopic of the fictional Rick Martin (inspired by but not based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke, the tenth-best artist of the 1920s, original “Young Man With a Horn” and jazz music’s first tragic hero, who’d be a very interesting case study if given a historically accurate treatment) grows shallow in the final act, feigning tragedy and character growth in favor of crowd-pleasing melodrama and a contrived happy ending.

Rick’s “rock bottom” epiphanies excuse his own questionable behavior, and his magical cure-all — finally realizing he’s in love with the devoted singer he’s repeatedly spurned — is a rushed and convenient fix that makes all the film’s prior messaging about jazz artistry and musical ambition ring hollow.

“We’re a dance orchestra and our main job is to play a tempo they can dance to. No blues and no low-down jive. The public likes novelty stuff and that’s what we’re gonna give ’em.” — Jack Chandler

Why Young Man With a Horn gets a B

Old Hollywood film about music that ultimately doesn’t have enough to say about music, akin to Minnelli’s An American in Paris (1952) or Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927).

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