Janis

Well, this isn't the best of Janis ever captured on film, but it is the lone document of the best female singer ever! I just wish they had more Big Brother clips. There are many other TV shows, concerts, etc. that were filmed, so this is incomplete, but it does highlight some of the best: Monterey Pop Festival, the best performance I think Janis ever gave; Woodstock, but she isn't in it very much (there was so much more filmed!); Cheap Thrills recording sessions, and The Dick Cavett Show. But seriously, Laura Joplin needs to release a complete documentary, with all performances uncut and unedited! A lot of the concert footage is severely edited, either cut in half or the last fraction of a song is heard, which is disappointing from such a talent as Janis. Most of the Frankfurt concert (with "Maybe", "Summertime", "Ball and Chain", "Piece of My Heart") is horrible and only an interview from the excellent Swedish special is present. For more live Janis, try COMIN' HOME, BALL AND CHAIN, and a few compilation videos have stuff from the Swedish special. Try this movie out if you're a budding Janis fan, but I think you'll be sorely disappointed when you discover how much more perfect performances could have gone into this one.

This film is an excellent collage of musical performances and interviews with Janis Joplin. It gives a true sense of her power as a performer, featuring clips of her most famous performances. The Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock, and various television performances are all here. For fans who want to revisit the past or people just being introduced to Janis, this is the perfect place to start your musical journey.

At the same time, Janis features lots of excellent interviews and behind the scenes footage, ranging from appearances on the Dick Cavett Show to film of her recording songs with her band. By including these clips, the film gives us a better sense of who Joplin actually was.

The film leaves out any discussion of how Joplin died, which is for the better. Rather than focusing on morbid gossip, the film celebrates her life, which in the end is why she is really remembered.

My review description may seem a bit blunt, but it literally describes what this 1974 flick is. It's not a documentary. Nor is it a docudrama. Nor is it a rockumentary. It is just over an hour and a half of Janis Joplin concert footage combined with Joplin interview snippets. And nothing more than that.

Which is fine. Particularly if one just wants to see and hear Joplin perform and periodically talk in an interview setting. Well, that's exactly what you get. Virtually nothing by way of others looking at the camera and saying why they think Janis is so great. Definitely not a nostalgia trip, either: the film was put out four years after Joplin passed away and has nothing by way of filmed interviews conducted after Joplin died. Thus, it's not recollections from people who knew her filmed thirty years or more after the fact.

Not quite ten stars for the reasons others have mentioned as far back as the initial theatrical film critic reviews in late 1974. Some of those reasons being the lack of a chronological approach in reference to the placement of the performance clips in the film. Little to nothing mentioned or referenced re: Joplin's pre-1967 life. No interviews with any of the band members in any of the groups who played with Joplin, nor were there any interviews with family or friends. As one reviewer commented back in 1974, there is no narration or commentary...not even as much of a mention in the movie that Joplin died. Contrast all of that with the 1973 film about Jimi Hendrix, where at least one has some sort of a sense of who Hendrix was offstage before he became famous as well as how his fame affected him.

Overall, though, 1974's Janis: A Film is useful in providing an undiluted look and listen to Joplin the singer and performer. Far as I know, this has never been upgraded to dvd form in the United States.

This is one of the best movies I have ever seen. It documents Janis Joplin with her 3 bands: Big Brother and the Holding Company, Kosmic Blues Band, and the Full Tilt Boogie Band. It is a collection of her best songs, Ball & Chain (1969), Piece of My Heart (1969), and Maybe (1969, also). I personally think that the Kosmic Blues Band is the best, especially their rendition of "Summertime". This is a must-see for fans of Pearl.

Amazing live performances captured on film are the reason to see to see this.

The interviews with Janis don't reveal much, and there's no real sense of her history.

Even the stage stuff is shot pretty straightforwardly, but, man-o-man could she sing!

One wonderful thing is that a lot of the numbers are uncut, allowed to go their full length, which, with Janis in concert, could easily be 8 minutes or more. The power, the emotion, the energy, the sexiness, the sweet sense of fun she brought to the stage could only be hinted at on her albums. For those reasons it's more than worth sitting through the slightly homogenized off-stage material.