Lady Sings the Blues

I would be the first to agree that it was standard fare as far as a musical bio...and Cabaret was a superior film. But Diana Ross' performance was a stunning film debut. This is the kind of overlooked performance that makes it so clear that pure ability is not what the Academy Awards are all about. I tend to think really great acting always sneaks above the voting members scope of being able to truly reccognize great acting.

But anyone who hasn't seen Diana Ross' performance in Lady is in for a treat. To think that she went through so many transitions within the film: from youngster, to a drug addict, to a grand singer...it's a truly great performance.

First off this is NOT a factual biography of Billie Holiday...a lot of her dark side is ignored. That aside, this is a pretty good movie. It follows Holiday from a little girl all the way up to her debut at Carnegie Hall. Along the way she deals with drug addiction, rape, prostitution etc etc. That's the big problem with the movie--it's too depressing. Holiday is a victim again and again and again. It wears one down seeing this woman just torn apart over and over. Also, the movie is too long--2 1/2 hours. Still, it's worth seeing for Diana Ross performance (Oscar-nominated). She sings like Holiday and (sometimes) looks like her. She never strikes a wrong note is her acting--she's letter perfect in every scene. So watch it for her and the music. Otherwise, it's pretty depressing. Also, there's a good supporting performance by Richard Pryor.

Diana Ross is quite superb as jazz singer Billie Holiday, but even so this clichéd bio-drama of the drug-addicted torch diva from the 1930s is hardly convincing. After an enjoyably overwrought prologue (with Holiday brutally incarcerated like a gangster out of a Jimmy Cagney flick), the movie sputters along familiar territory, and the burnished, brackish look of the picture--probably meant for prestige--is a visual downer. The tone wavers at times (a comedic sequence with Scatman Crothers is either a distraction or a relief), and the film's flashback structure is a cheap gimmick (you know you're in for it when the filmmakers start super-imposing headlines across the screen--it's movie shorthand for "we're running out of time"). Ross is a spectacular drawing card, but this vehicle for her debuting acting talents leaves much to be desired. **1/2 from ****

Now that I am fortysomething (which amazes even me), I can look back and remember the Supremes final appearance on the Ed Sullivan show...and I can also remember Ed announcing that "Miss Ross is leaving the Supremes to pursue an acting career". An acting career....who does she think she is? I pondered this question for the longest time, and remained disappointed in Diana Ross until the very first moments of "Lady Sings the Blues", which play like a jazz tune that seems, at first, to make no sense until you as the listener finally tune into the music which actually made sense all along. Diana Ross dosen't so much act the part of Billie Holiday -- she crafts an unforgettable performance that both embodies the spirit of Holiday while also demonstrating the simplest but most complicated acting demands....she simply poses the question, "What if this were my life?". She produces an acting performance that, coupled with the personalized Holiday vocal interpretations, pull the audience into a deeper and deeper sense of completely going on the character's complete life journey -- you completely believe Ross is Holiday because she is so sure of herself -- SHE believes it -- completely. The story follows a typical formula, but the true reason to watch this film is the acting lesson that Ross teaches. Watch this one -- and learn a little something about craft -- from a master instructor, way ahead of her time.

Diana Ross put in a very fine performance playing a very difficult role. Sadly, that role was not Billie Holiday and this is my big problem with this film. Any film with a musician as its subject should have loads of that musician's art. Diana Ross does sing some songs, but the MUSIC is not the focus of the film. The unhistoric life of Lady Day is: her experiences as a prostitute, her first gig, getting discovered, touring with a white band, Strange Fruit, etc. They are all thrown together into a hapless hodge-podge lacking continuity or even a semblance of a timeline. An even greater sin is that Lady Day did not develop in a vacuum as this film would have you believe. She was a vital part of the larger jazz scene of the 30s and 40s, a scene she shared on an equal footing with such giants as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, and most importantly John Hammond, the famous producer and talent scout who discovered Lady Day in a small Harlem club. None of these people appear in the film in any way, shape, or fashion. That's not just ridiculous, it's criminal. I don't know if there was a permissions problem in portraying them on film (some of them were still alive when the film was made), but their absence is sorely felt.

Amadeus is also criticized as unhistoric, which it is, but it made the best of Mozart's life by putting his music at center stage. (It also helps that the events it portrayed were in chronological order.) The same could have maybe rescued LADY SINGS THE BLUES, but the opportunity was missed. Other than Diana Ross's harrowing portrayal of a heroin addicted singer (who could have been anyone but Billie Holiday), there is nothing to recommend this movie. Go watch Ken Burns' JAZZ series instead.