Mixing animated sequences and archival footage, Oscar is a touching portrait of virtuoso pianist Oscar Peterson at the twilight of an exceptional career, as he wistfully meditates on the price of fame and the impacts of the artist’s life on family life.

From the young prodigy’s beginnings in Little Burgundy to his triumphs on the international scene, this animated documentary by Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre explores the profound solitude of an artist constantly on tour. Set to the tunes of Peterson’s sometimes catchy, sometimes melancholy-tinged compositions, the film tells a heartfelt story about a life in jazz.

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson is one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time. Born in Montreal in 1925, young Oscar was encouraged by his father to develop his dazzling technique. Oscar expressed profound admiration for virtuoso Art Tatum—one of his early influences, who he discovered while listening to a record of what he thought were two pianists playing. It’s an amusing anecdote, considering that many of the biggest names in American jazz that Oscar later accompanied in life (including Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong) would soon be calling him the “man with four hands.”

It was thanks to the exposure he gained from his radio performances while still a teenager that Oscar was invited by impresario Norman Granz to leave his hometown and move on to bigger and better things. Granz was in a cab on his way to the airport when a song of Oscar playing live from the Alberta Lounge came on the air. Granz had the cabbie made a quick detour, and a handshake later history was made. Granz added Peterson to the legendary Jazz series playbill at the Philharmonic. He also made him the leader of a famous trio and the official pianist of the different record labels he founded.

From the 1950s to his death in 2007, Peterson recorded countless albums, both as lead artist and accompanist, making him one of the most prolific and popular pianists in the history of jazz—with an impressive list of prestigious awards to prove it.

Since the founding of her production company MJSTP Films in 2004, filmmaker Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre has established herself through a body of work that is both coherent and personal – at the crossroads of documentary, fiction and animated film. Her first film, McLaren’s Negatives, sheds light on artist and NFB animation pioneer Norman McLaren. The film has been presented at over 150 festivals around the world and garnered some twenty prestigious distinctions, including the Jutra for best animated film in 2007. Following the release of her film Jutra (2014), which was co-produced by the NFB and focuses on the Quebec filmmaker’s life and career, Saint-Pierre set out to create a portrait of Montreal pianist and composer Oscar Peterson with Oscar, her most recent film, also co-produced by the NFB.

By a fortunate turn of events, it was while watching Begone Dull Care (1949) by Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart that she had her first contact with the music and legend of Oscar Peterson. To create their film, designated as a “Masterwork” by the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, McLaren and Lambart painted and scratched directly on celluloid to the sounds of Peterson’s music, an innovative technique designed in the Animation Studio founded by McLaren. “[The duo] animated the film after the music was recorded,” says Saint-Pierre. “It’s a musical and visual symbiosis that I found overwhelming.”

A pianist and ardent jazz enthusiast herself, Saint-Pierre studied the path taken by the “Brown Bomber of Boogie-Woogie,” a native son of Little Burgundy. As she worked on the film, her own perception of the jazzman evolved. “I discovered the man behind the virtuoso, so yes, my vision changed. I became interested in understanding how a great communicator like Oscar Peterson, who was loved and idolized by everyone, could remain almost completely unknown by those close to him.”

Charmed by the quintessential album Night Train, Saint-Pierre makes no secret of her admiration for Peterson. As with McLaren and Jutra previously, it was a case of “artistic love at first sight.” The filmmaker admits being touched by “[the] decision he made to put his career before his personal life. Almost all of the film’s narration, done by Oscar Peterson, was recorded at the end of his life. It provides a glimpse into the choices he made. You have to view the film to find out what he thinks about his life choices.”

The second part of this short film evokes the pianist’s solitude that grew out of the sacrifices he made because he wanted to pursue an international career. Though she is moved by the candid confessions of a melancholic Peterson, the filmmaker disagrees with the common belief that solitude and sacrifice are sine qua non conditions for life as a creator. “Without reducing the situation to a masculine-feminine binary, I think it’s representative of the period and societal stereotypes. It was conceivable for a man to go off to pursue a career and leave his family behind. He was expected be a provider at all costs.”

Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre willingly acknowledges that, as was the case with Begone Dull Care, Peterson’s music – his melodies and rhythms – greatly influenced the film’s form and aesthetics. “I’ve always loved jazz, especially because of the freedom it gives musicians to improvise. I tried to reproduce the chronological evolution of the graphic styles of the various eras. But the music was added to the sequences to heighten the emotions I wanted to suggest. It came after the images.”

Other parallels could no doubt be made between jazz and Saint-Pierre’s way of making animated films, because we sense that she allowed herself the freedom to improvise according to the archival excerpts she incorporated into her film. “I choose the character and after that the archives work their magic, depending on what I find along the way. A film is an entity in itself. You have to give it a chance to blossom during the production process. I don’t believe in holding hard and fast to storylines.”

Just as music lovers past and present are dazzled by the legendary pianist’s dexterity, film buffs will appreciate Saint-Pierre’s ability to give each of her works its own visual identity. “It’s really important for me to refrain from making the same film visually, over and over. That’s something I inherited from Norman McLaren’s approach. For Oscar, I wanted to recreate an atmosphere conducive to jazz. That’s why most of the film takes place at night.”

After watching Oscar, audiences will applaud the filmmaker’s style. The poetry of the images. The virtuosity. And the swing. Essentially, the form and substance…