Docufilms.com ^®

Moving from Naples to Paris, Nino Bizzarri tries to track down a forgotten but highly gifted guitarist, Henri Crolla. A child of the Italian immigration wave in the 1920s, he grew up in the poverty-stricken Parisian suburbs of the time, where he met Django Reinhardt whose pupil he became, before embarking on his own career. He composed over forty film scores and several tunes that are still famous today, such as Sanguine, fruit joli. Through interviews with members of his family, his friends (Georges Moustaki) and those who worked with him (Jacques Higelin, José Artur) the filmmaker tries to convey the exceptional personality of this musician, whose premature death, at the age of forty, led to his reputation sinking into oblivion. Although the film is a tribute to Crolla, it is also very interesting for its lively and detailed descriptions, via archival footage, of the eventful eras, both terrible and thrilling, that the guitarist lived through.