Arena (1975)
Season 2009
Wide-ranging arts program.
Where to Watch Season 2009
3 Episodes
- Tony Bennett: the Music Never Ends
E1Tony Bennett: the Music Never EndsThe singer looks back on his long and illustrious career in this Arena film, in conversation with his friend and fellow jazz enthusiast Clint Eastwood. Bennett's musical lineage is revealed in archive jazz performances, musicals and excerpts from his 2005 performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival, while contributors include Martin Scorsese, Mel Brooks and Harry Belafonte. Plus Nick Tosches, inspired biographer of Dean Martin, has a hand in the script. - Cool
E2CoolDocumentary exploring the meaning and history of cool through the American music of the 1940s and 50s that became known as cool jazz. Those who wrote and played it cultivated an attitude, a style and a language that came to epitomise the meaning of a word that is now so liberally used. The film tells the story of a movement that started in the bars and clubs of New York and Los Angeles and swept across the world, introducing the key players and setting them in the context of the post-war world. - T.S. Eliot
E3T.S. EliotFor the first time on television, Arena tells the whole story of the life and work of TS Eliot, including the happiness he found in the last years of life in his second marriage. His widow Valerie Eliot has opened her personal archive, hitherto unseen, including the private scrapbooks and albums in which Eliot assiduously recorded their life together. Arena brings an unprecedented insight into the mysterious life of one of the 20th century's greatest poets, and re-examines his extraordinary work and its startling immediacy in the world today. Thomas Stearns Eliot materialises as banker, critic, playwright, children's writer, churchwarden, publisher, husband and poet.