ON THE ROAD WITH DUKE ELLINGTON

An overview without a point of view, a sketch without perspective, Robert Drew’s film works only as an introduction to the jazz great. Placing equal weight on Ellington’s all-night composing sessions and his morning meals, the filmmaker reverently follows a 68-year-old genius still going out night after night, as the narrator notes, to play ”the same old standards…again and again.” But how does that feel? We won’t find out here: Drew is less interested in exploring an artist than in enshrining a legend.