MOVIE REVIEW : ARTIE SHAW: PROFILE OF A DILEMMA

Artie Shaw was the Hamlet of Swing: brooding, troubled, intense, darkly handsome--the man who could not make up his mind. He was arguably the major show business anachronism of the ‘30s and ‘40s: a jazz clarinetist who’d read all of Proust; a man who married three movie stars (yet thought his own movies ridiculous); a swing band giant who adored Debussy and once said “jitterbugs are morons”; a white bandleader who hired Billie Holiday and Hot Lips Page during touchier times, and refused Southern tours that wouldn’t include them; a rich, adulated entertainer--who kept walking away from his career to pursue his first love, writing.

Shaw was not the most creative of the big band musician-composers; Duke Ellington was. But, obviously, he’s a fascinating figure--complex, hard to unravel. And Brigitte Berman does a wonderful job in her documentary “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” (at the Monica Saturdays and Sundays through March). She makes history live, catches the moment and its recollection. In this film, Shaw come alive for you in ways that go beyond his physical presence (still handsome, a balding, bearded 74), or the sound of his clarinet (its impeccable sheen and limpid line).

Berman interviews a dozen of Shaw’s old friends and colleagues, including Mel Torme and Helen Forrest, unearths classic archival footage--and talks at length with Shaw himself, who proves amazingly candid. He may have been a mystery to ‘40s jazz audiences, and to the ‘50s House Un-American Activities Committee--whose interrogations drove him into self-imposed Spanish exile. But, after the film, he seems close, approachable. You’re eager to hear his music again, curious about his writing (the 1952 memoir, “The Trouble With Cinderella”).

What lay behind his fabulous, baffling persona? He insists now he was trapped in a world for which he was temperamentally unsuited. The shy young Jewish immigrant, Arthur Arshawsky--bookish and introverted--was worlds away from the outer persona: jazz’s showy, dynamic matinee idol Artie.

But, after all, Shaw wanted success, drove himself to it. It’s hard to feel he was so ill-suited to an environment where he functioned so well, produced such remarkable music. And, if he hated the spotlight, why was he so drawn to wives who inhabited it: Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, novelist Kathleen (“Forever Amber”) Winsor, Evelyn Keyes?

It’s Evelyn Keyes who gives the most touching of all the tributes. She comments on Shaw’s perfectionism: his insistence, for example, on hanging toilet paper in exactly the same way every time. (To this day, she cannot hang tissue without thinking of Shaw, and doing it his way.) Strange index of admiration? You watch her eyes, and you can tell that it’s real.

Shaw’s own recollections are eloquent, but, in the film’s most oddly beautiful moment, he is mute. Recalling the session for his band’s record of Gershwin’s “Summertime”--and how trumpet virtuoso Roy Eldridge argued about his solo’s style--Shaw listens to it again. His eyes get far away. His hand swings to the song, moves with a kind of self-conscious, smooth rapture, drenched in the rhythm. At that moment, you sense what music always meant to Artie Shaw--and perhaps what Artie Shaw meant to music as well.