Lady Sings The Blues

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: B-     Film: B

 

 

In the 1960s, The Supremes were a huge success, but Motown Founder and mogul Berry Gordy had a strong belief that lead singer Diana Ross could go on to have a strong a solo career.  He even envisioned it beyond the record business.  Ross’ solo career had a mixed success when it began, including some huge hits (Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Reach Out & Touch (Somebody’s Hand) and interesting smaller charters (Remember Me, I’m Still Waiting) but not with the consistency that her work in the group that eventually added her name did.  Gordy decided motion pictures was a logical next step and so began the road to Lady Sings The Blues.

 

Gordy saw the potential for Ross to play the legendary Jazz vocalist Billie Holiday in a biopic with substance and a difference.  Slowly, the project took root at Paramount Pictures and the film landed up having four times the budget of any previous majority black cast film ($500,000 vs. $2 Million, which was more money at the time than now, but still on the low side) the studio was not happy with the film when it was near completion.  In one of his legendary moves, he wrote a check for the budget to buy the film back from the studio, all of which is fascinating to hear about now as the film went on to be a big critical and commercial hit.

 

Ross plays Holiday very convincingly at several ages, as she went from struggling and going through some ugly and painful experiences, to establishing herself as “Lady Day” from a single club to the entire jazz world.  Gordy hired director Sidney J. Furie to helm the film, who had at least one classic under his belt in The Ipcress File, a 1965 Spy thriller classic with Michael Caine produced by James Bond mogul Harry Saltzman.  Furie had experience clashing with Saltzman on that film, which prepared him for going at it with Gordy.  Fortunately, it was the kind of constant hard working creative clashes where both parties want the best for the film, something happening too rarely these days in the “nicey nice” atmosphere of bad and politically correct film production of today that is killing the industry.

 

Billy Dee Williams was put on the map as her love interest (though she had several key men in her life in real life, this film settled for one) and it also offers a remarkable acting performance by Richard Pryor, who would later go on to be one of the most important critical and commercial feature film performers of the decade in concert films, Arthur Hiller’s trend setting action comedy Silver Streak and the gritty Paul Schrader drama Blue Collar.  Isabel Sanford plays a Madame when Holiday is a young girl just before immortality as Louise Jefferson in All In The Family and The Jeffersons, while Scatman Crothers and Ned Glass also star in memorable roles.

 

As Madonna had for the underappreciated Evita, Ross had to take special vocal lessons to perform the new style and form of music, made more complicated by the decision not to exactly duplicate Holiday’s singing and vocal style.  In both cases, it made them better singers and added to the quality, longetivity and greatness of their later music careers with Ross hitting new highs after the film.  Jazz purists idiotically went on to bash Ross for not sounding like Holiday, missing the point as lesser critics always do, that it was a cinematic non-carbon copy.  They should stick to music only, but proved their ignorance yet again when Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles performance in Ray (2004) was bashed for similar reasons among other things.  The soundtrack went on to become a huge hit and Good Morning Heartache was even a hit single!

 

It is a better biopic than the usual and there is no doubt it holds up very well.  These days, Ross is getting bashed all the time for no good reason, but in real life is an amazing actress when the role is a serious challenge.  There was great hope that the film would start a new era for African Americans on screen, but Blaxploitation and too many mainstream films that were either historical slavery dramas or modern “poverty struggle” melodramas that offered no serious empowerment.  It would take Spike Lee leading the Black New Wave nearly twenty years later to change this, but Lady Sings The Blues was a bright light at the end of a long dark tunnel that a few are just now starting to exit.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is not bad, though some of the shot have Video Black limits and some detail limits, but the great cinematographer John Alonzo, A.S.C. shot it in real Panavision and the use of color and composition is often rich and stunning.  The space always feels very real and of its time, while Production Designer Carl Anderson delivers some of the best work of his long career.  The film was released in three-strip Technicolor prints and though this is a good transfer, the color is not always that good.  Still, it is better than what you will see in many new releases and plays back just fine.

 

The sound has been remixed in Dolby Digital 5.1 and works out very well considering its age and that it was an optical monophonic release, but purists will be happy a Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track is also included.  The music (vocal songs or instrumentals by Michel Legrand or Gil Askey) never sounds too forward or too overly clear versus the sound effects or dialogue, which is a plus.  I wish this was in DTS, but this will do for now, especially after decades of muddy mono home video versions.  Extras include a truly exceptional 23:03 featurette Behind The Blues that hits the nail on the head and gives closure to so many things and issues involving the film, those who made it possible and how its legacy is more extraordinary than anyone could have imagined in its time.  Though there is no trailer (!!!), you also get seven deleted scenes and an exceptional audio commentary by Furie, Gordy and “artist manager” Shelly Berger which is excellent.  Furie did a commentary that appears on the 12” LaserDisc and DVD of The Ipcress File and is one of those directors who is so well spoken, that everyone will enjoy what he has to say.  So many of the Video label’s releases of so many key films on DVD are still in basic-only editions.  Lady Sings The Blues is another special landmark from the last golden age of American filmmaking that deserved much better and got it.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo