Show Me the Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall review – shooting stars

This absorbing documentary traces the career of the photographer who captured memorable moments, from Johnny Cash in jail to the Beatles’ last gig

Jim Marshall is not a household name, but many of the photographs he took, especially of pop, rock and jazz musicians, are seared into our collective memory. The shot of Johnny Cash at San Quentin flipping off the camera with a sneer on his face? Marshall took that. Miles Davis in a boxing ring, his face uncharacteristically soft and mellow? That was Marshall, too. And so were the shots of the Beatles playing their last live concert together in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park – the only official photography that was permitted that day.

Alfred George Bailey’s absorbing documentary annoyingly skips back and forth to trace Marshall’s colourful career, but the imagery and the illuminating discussion that springs from close friends, lovers and collaborators and even Marshall himself in some archive material, makes the trip worth it. He emerges as a volatile, choleric creature, damaged by an unhappy childhood and then later a victim of his own raging appetites for drugs and confrontation that would land him in jail.