MISSISSIPPI BLUES (PAYS D'OCTOBRE) (2 DVD-SET)

A documentary on the poor life of the few inhabitants left in the area of the Mississippi Delta and on what remains of blues. The camera shows old Baptist priests, houses, bars, farms and wooden churches surrounded by swamps and reeds to seek and record ancient music: here we find the traces of a culture which is disappearing and the roots of a very vital, violent, gay or sad music that talks about misery, hopes, rhythmic frenzies and rightful social ambitions.

In 1982, Tavernier was going through a period of reflection, although in reality he was preparing a big documentary on that part of the south found in Thompson's "The Sound and the Fury", and the jazz that he is so fond of comes from, and where the roots are to be found that he so loves to explore in people - in himself first of all - and in their works. All of 1983 was dedicated to moving to America, thanks to his friendship with one of Hollywood's B movie greats, Robert (Bob) Parrish, whose underrated films he admired, films such as The Purple Plain (Pianura rossa, 1955), which deal with the subject of roots and personal harbingers. Parrish, a man of about seventy, is from Georgia, and is a director who knows the South and its literary culture, its cinema and music, that culture that Tavernier, in his eclecticism wants to summarise.

Together over a period of six weeks, using two different crews, they film four hours of material for a television show - for Antenna 2 - which was later reduced by half for the film. Thus was born Mississippi Blues, the title alone suggests the precipitous interest for the musical roots of his beloved jazz, tracked down in the street ballads, improvised on old instruments by amateur musicians, or in the church songs, enjoyed by the most humble churchgoers in moments of group gathering. "Blues is when you haven't got a dime and your girl has dumped you." explains an old interviewee. In truth the film is still a "journey to the end of the night", often made on foot - as always - inspired by research done on William Faulkner, following a visit to his grave in Oxford, and retracing the roads which separate the South in which Parrish grew up from the present-day South. Roads of abandonment and desolation, amidst old cafès and run-down farmyards, all a microcosm touched by the hand of death, a death the interviewees refuse to see and which they attempt to escape by clinging desperately to their music. But the landscape permits no escape. The rivers and forests are in decay. One sees the house which was used in Meet me in St. Louis by Vincent Minnelli. But that was in 1945. Now the house is in ruins. As is the cemetery where Faulkner lies buried, and on his gravestone a quotation appears which ends the documentary: "The past is not dead, neither has it yet come to pass". This is an affirmation that permits Tavernier, like on other occasions, to not put a lid on the discourse, but to leave a glimmer which leads the way to his next two films, One Sunday in the country and Round Midnight, a film based on two old people in the process of preparing for their death, something they do with such dignity, remembering a not quite extinguished past, a glorious past that continues to live.

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