Jim Morrison – The Doors: a documentary on SkyArte reconstructs the last days in Paris

A documentary film constructed as a road trip detective story, which reconstructs the last days in Paris of Jim Morrison, the leader of the Doors, who died at the age of 27 in 1971. “Jim Morrison – Last Days in Paris” will be broadcast on Sky Arte on Wednesday 3 July at 9.15pm (and repeated on Thursday 4 July, at 2.30pm).
A tragic coincidence links the destinies of legendary figures such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Jim Morrison: their human and artistic careers ended prematurely at the age of 27. In Morrison's case, the circumstances of his death have never been clarified enough to prevent speculation and conspiracy theories of all kinds. His lifeless body was found on the night between July 2 and 3, 1971, by his partner Pamela Courson: the mysterious death helped fuel the interest around his now iconic figure. Heart attack? Overdose? Conspiracy? The lack of an autopsy is just one of the complex circumstances connected to that unsolved death, on which the film focuses thanks to an investigation that examines the period immediately preceding the tragic event. Morrison, prosecuted for obscenity, had in fact left the United States for Europe, settling in Paris with the hope of starting a new phase. But, over fifty years ago, the French capital ended up being his final resting place…

Thanks to exclusive interviews, the hour-long documentary reopens one of the most famous cold cases of recent years: what is the truth behind the mysterious death of Jim Morrison?
That fateful night in Paris consigned him to the pantheon of burned lives in rock, in the company of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, who had died only a few months earlier. It was the end of a crazy season, made of lysergic dreams, poetry and damnation. One cannot help but agree with rock critic Riccardo Bertoncelli, when he writes that “with his sincere but pathetic impulses towards an art-truth, with the desire to throw himself to the point of immolation in the fire of Pure Expression, Jim Morrison ended up killing the Doors and ruining himself, personifying to the extreme the contradiction that is at the heart of rock: music of joy and liberation that carries within itself the black clot of destruction and chaos”.