(Anita O'Day)

In 1958 photographer Bert Stern descended upon Newport, Rhode Island to make a documentary about the music of the Newport Jazz Festival. Surprisingly, the jazz is not the real reason to own the resulting film Jazz on a Summer's Day. The movie should be kept as a time capsule of sorts for the sartorially obsessed. A day in the life of actual Don and Betty Drapers drinking beer out of Dixie cups, dripping in the casual elegance of the era.

Jazz on a Summer's Day is a flashback to one of the most optimistic times in American history. The documentary features moving performances by jazz greats like Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson and the deeply troubled singer Anita O'Day. A particular shot of O'Day, dressed in a beautiful hat and white gloves as she serenades the bird-caged microphone, has resonated with audiences for decades. In her autobiography years later, O'Day, a longtime drug addict and subject of a recent documentary, amazingly reveled that she was high on heroin during that famed performance. This revelation, while shocking considering it was 1958 and not 1988, does little to diminish the beauty and timelessness of the film.

The remarkably pure photographic quality of the Jazz on a Summer's Day -- shot in a sort of Kodachrome-meets-high-definition -- magnifies the style and charisma of the time. With the memorable musical sets, peppered with shots of the well-heeled crowd and the picturesque yachts of the America's Cup trials off the coast of Newport, this film creates a setting of unmatched American sophistication. --MICHAEL WILLIAMS

Go see: Anita O'Day: Life of a Jazz Singer

Buy: Jazz on a Summer's Day

(Louis Armstrong)

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