*½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B
starring Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor, James T. Callahan
screenplay by Terence McCloy and Chris Clark and Suzanne De Passe
directed by Sidney J. Furie
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Billie Holliday never really surfaces in her ostensible biopic, Lady Sings the Blues. There's somebody using her name, of course, somebody who pouts and shrieks and cries copious tears–but no matter how much Diana Ross knocks herself out "emoting," she doesn't do justice to her predecessor. Nor, for that matter, does the movie she's in. The supremely jaundiced Sidney J. Furie has seen fit to jettison any real mention of either Holliday's music or her convictions, replacing them with a blackface Valley of the Dolls–the story of not one of jazz's premier vocalists, but a sad little girl hooked on heroin. Ross is a solid junkie, all right, yet she and everybody else connected with the production are wrong to impose this on someone who should be remembered for a few things beyond sordid melodrama.
The film announces its intentions by starting with a freeze-frame trip wherein Holliday's arrested for possession, writhing and squealing until they lob her into a padded cell and apply the appropriate straitjacket. That our first flashback to her miserable existence involves her rape at 14 by one of her hooker mother's regulars is another clue (and Ross's would-be pubescent get-up is ridiculous, for what it's worth), and the film basically charts a downhill spiral into prostitution until she walks into a club and lands herself a singing gig. This ought to be her rebound point, especially as she finds love in yummy Louis McKay (Billy Dee Williams)–but no, she goes on tour, hits the spike, and winds up wrecked. Louis loves her, everybody loves her, but will she be stable enough to make it to…Carnegie Hall?
It's no secret that Holliday's life was a nightmare and a wreck. Still, Lady Sings the Blues never quite establishes her as anything else. That she was an innovator and a giant in her field never registers: the movie Holliday occasionally has "inspirational" moments ("Strange Fruit" comes from a convenient roadside lynching) but never delves into how she managed to cast a spell on so many people regardless of her troubles. Worse, the film name-checks racism without really taking a stand on it, reaching a low point when the band bus wanders past a Klan rally and Ross has another shrieking fit. They want you to know she's in pain–and pain, as opposed to tribute, is what this movie traffics in. It wants you to enjoy every awful moment of their fantasy Billie instead of sympathizing with her plight.
The film's fudging of the facts comes as no shock, particularly the non-mention of the many abusive relationships that marked Holliday's sorry romantic career (hey–Billy Dee Williams wouldn't hurt a fly). But the way it fudges them does serious damage to the lustre of their alleged subject. They turn her into a (more) fucked-up Judy Garland, determined to prevail while encountering narcotic resistance along the way. To be honest about a shattered life is one thing, but to wedge it into a cheesy masochistic movie template is beyond the pale, rendering the film infuriating and creepy to watch. Furie, for his part, puts on the yellow light and saturated colours to make things that much more fetid, and after a while you want to slap him, the writers, and everybody else involved in this professionally-made washout.
THE DVD
If Paramount's DVD presentation isn't exactly a washout, neither has it completely dripped dry. The 2.35:1, 16×9-enhanced image is reasonably sharp and well-saturated, though some generic fuzziness prevents it from receiving top marks. The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix, however, is a bit of a disappointment. A film with so much music ought to activate the surround channels with a little more frequency than Lady Sings the Blues does here, and there's a serious lack of oomph to the sound overall.
Extras include a feature-length commentary with Sidney J. Furie, producer Berry Gordy, and "artist manager" Shelley Berger. It's light on actual technical/artistic information, but it does show the epic struggle to convince the studio of the appeal of the picture's black-centric subject matter. Gordy recalls Paramount head Frank Yablans's total lack of faith, which found him putting up a completion guarantee and then refusing to fund it to the end; Gordy bought it back outright and had the last laugh once Lady Sings the Blues became a surprise hit. Unfortunately, these three aren't geniuses when it comes to the art of cinema, as evidenced by one participant's remark "use the cliché, and that makes it real." Meanwhile, "Behind the Blues: Lady Sings the Blues" is a 22-minute retrospective featurette that details Gordy's desire to mount a romantic black movie at any cost, with Ross, Williams, and screenwriter Suzanne de Passe on hand to offer background flavour. It's not a bad documentary, except when it tries to inflate the film's importance–while it might have been a nice change of pace from blaxploitation, that doesn't mean it's the classic it's touted as here. Seven deleted scenes (on blurry video) are mostly redundant filler, although a good scene with Williams beating up a band member/drug connection is worth a look.
143 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Paramount
