Lady Sings the Blues

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Movie
German title Lady Sings the Blues
Original title Lady Sings the Blues
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1972
length 125 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Sidney J. Furie
script Suzanne de Passe ,
Chris Clark ,
Terence McCloy
production Jay Weston ,
James S. White
music Gil Askey ,
Michel Legrand
camera John A. Alonzo
cut Argyle Nelson
occupation

Lady Sings the Blues is an American biopic from the year 1972 by Sidney J. Furie . Diana Ross plays the famous jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-1959). This film is based on her memories of the same name (1956).

Diana Ross plays ...
... Billie Holiday

action

The story begins in 1936 when the talented jazz singer Billie Holiday was arrested in New York for drug possession. Billie recalls: In 1928 the young girl was working as a housekeeper in a brothel in Baltimore. When she returns to her aunt's home, she is home alone and is raped by a man who has followed her home from the brothel. She runs to her mother, who is trying to make a living with a cleaning job in another brothel in Harlem, New York. The brothel in which Billie works is run by an arrogant, selfish owner who pays the black teenagers very little money. Billie doesn't like scrubbing floors anymore and becomes a prostitute for a short time. She doesn't like this at all, and Billie goes to a nightclub. She wants to audition for the owner there to become a showgirl. The black “Piano Man” employed here accompanies Billie as she sings “All of Me”. Club owner Jerry is impressed by Billie's skills and hires her as a singer for his show.

Billie's career start is unsuccessful until a certain Louis McKay comes along and hands her $ 50. Billie begins to like the handsome Louis and starts a liaison with him. Eventually she is discovered by Harry and Reg Hanley, whom they want to book as soloists for their tour to the south of the USA. Billie also sees this as a chance to be discovered for the radio. During the tour, Billie witnessed a lynching of a black man. This borderline experience leads Holiday to record the song "Strange Fruit". The bad experience during the tour leads Billie to start taking drugs that Harry gets her. One evening when Billie was performing, Louis came over to see Billie. During a performance, she collapses on stage. In her cloakroom, Louis notices various punctures in her body caused by syringe needles. Now he knows that Billie takes drugs and makes it clear to her that he wants to take her home with him. Billie promises Louis to stay away from drugs if he stays with her in the future.

In New York, Reg and Louis arrange Billie's radio debut, but the station doesn't have Billie sing. The show's sponsor, a soap company, turned down Holiday because of her black skin color. Billie and her men go to Cafe Manhattan to drown their worries and frustrations in alcohol. When he is drunk, Billie asks Harry for drugs. She says she doesn't want her family to know how angry she was about the radio experience. Harry refuses to comply with Billie's request, whereupon the unstable singer pours her full glass in his face. Billie then wants to leave the cafe, but Louis has made an arrangement that she can perform live here in the cafe. Little interested, she just sings a song and then wants to leave again. Even when she calls out for a dacapo, she doesn't let herself in. She quickly leaves the location, urgently looking for a new shot. Louis, who suspects that Billie has broken the promise made to him to stay clean, is now pulling on other strings. He brings Billie to his home, but denies her access to the bathroom and her drug equipment. Severely on withdrawal, Billie then threatens her lover with a razor blade. Louis realizes that there is no chance of getting Billie off the drugs in this way and leaves his apartment. When he comes back, he says to Billie, he doesn't want to see her here again.

Billie returns to the Harlem nightclub where she's been using more and more drugs. One day she learns that her mother has died. Billie is so shocked that she decides to finally change her life. And so she takes herself to a rehab clinic. Since she cannot afford her treatment, the hospital secretly calls Louis, who comes immediately and agrees to secretly pay her bills. Impressed with the initiative she has taken to get herself back on her feet, Louis asks Billie for her hand at the hospital. As things seem to be getting better, the police arrest Billie Holiday for possession of narcotics. In prison, Billie is suffering terribly from cold withdrawal, so Louis brings the hospital doctor over to see Billie. To further strengthen Billie's psyche, Louis puts a ring on Billie's finger to remind her that both of them will get married after their jail time. Billie's jail sentence has been served, and as soon as she is free again, she surprises all her friends and colleagues that she no longer wants to perform as a singer. Billie Holiday and Louis McKay get married, but soon the exceptional singer misses the stage so much that she returns there with Louis as her manager.

Her criminal record prevents Billie from getting permission to perform in New York City to sing in the local nightclub scene. But the artist wants to perform again at all costs, and so Billie decides to travel all over the United States on an extensive tour. Her night club sessions are a complete success and finally make the black artist known across America. Meanwhile, Louis returns to New York at short notice to finally organize Billie's career breakthrough here and get her a gig at Carnegie Hall . But the absence of Louis, whom Billie always needs around her for her well-being, and the apparently never-ending tour appearances that Billie is beginning to exhaust quickly make her despair, and so the singer begins to fall back into the old behavior patterns. They ask their accompanist at the piano, the Piano Man, to pledge the ring that Louis once gave her. The piano player with good connections to dealers should buy drugs with the money received. Piano You come back on drugs and he and Billie get high quickly. The singer doesn't know that the piano man cheated on the dealers, because they suddenly stand ante portas and kill the keyboard virtuoso.

Meanwhile, Louis is able to perfect the contract with Carnegie Hall in distant New York and travels back to Billie. It is devastated and completely drunk because of the traumatic events surrounding the murder of Piano Man. Louis brings her back to New York. Here Billie sings in the sold out Carnegie Hall, and the reviews are rocketing. But the authorities as well as themselves stand in the way of a fresh start. She does not get her permission back from New York, nor can she renounce drugs. Billie Holiday dies in 1959 at the age of only 44.

Production notes

Filming of Lady Sings the Blues began on December 6, 1971 and was completed in late January 1972. The New York premiere took place on October 18, 1972. The film opened in Germany on November 1, 1973.

Motown boss Berry Gordy took over the production management. The buildings were created by Carl Anderson , Reg alone took on the furnishing. Norma Koch designed the costumes.

The film cost around $ 14 million and grossed just under $ 20 million.

Awards and nominations

Lady Sings the Blues was nominated for an Oscar in five categories for

Reviews

The film received a lot of attention worldwide. While Diana Ross has praised Diana Ross's personality, presence, performance and singing skills, most reviewers barely left a good hair with the direction and the overall kitschy impression of the film. A number of examples are given below:

Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that Diana Ross was "an actress of extraordinary beauty and wit who is very busy making a bad film work," and concluded, "Her obvious handicaps are those that she scripts and impose the direction that only seems to be out to turn a true legend into a murderous cliché. "

In Variety it was read that “for the majority of the general public, the film is doing its job as a very good screen debut for Diana Ross, strongly supported by an excellent cast, pretty 1930s set and a script that is much better than in terms of dialog regarding the structure. "

Roger Ebert stated that Diana Ross would make "one of the great appearances of 1972" and that the film "shows most of the clichés that we expected - but do we really mind clichés in a film like this?"

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune found "The fact that 'Lady Sings the Blues' flopps as the biography of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday doesn't mean the film can't be entertaining."

Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times found Diana Ross to be "one of the truly beautiful film appearances, full of power and pathos and enormously committed and personable."

The grande dame of film criticism, Pauline Kael , said in The New Yorker : “When the film was over, I wrote on my slip of paper,“ I love him ”... It's de facto fraudulent, but emotionally it does it. It has what makes a film work for the general public: easy pleasure ... "

Wolf Donner was very divided during the time of the film. He wrote: "" Lady Sings the Blues "is a most annoying and a wonderful film. First the register of sins: Billie's gloomy childhood and youth in the brothel are played down and trivialized; their various husbands and lovers, who mostly brutally exploited them, are reduced to a single, noble, loyal, selfless model (...) The film shows at most facts, never causes; it is overloaded with big issues (racial discrimination, drug addiction, jazz culture, show business, a career, a biography) and remains on the surface in everything. (...) In addition, there are mistakes and the inability of the director to roll out every detail in a striking, thick and wide screen format. (…) Without Diana Ross, the film would be a bad bankruptcy. If she plays the shy, lanky girl ... then you forget all trouble. Diana Ross at the microphone has a presence and immediacy, an erotic and emotional fluid that is of a rare fascination. ”

The Movie & Video Guide decreed: “Worthless as a biography but okay as a soap opera; with excellent support from Richard Pryor as "Piano Man". "

Halliwell's Film Guide characterized the film as follows: "Old-fashioned show business biography with new-fangled drugs, sex and misery".

The lexicon of the international film criticized harshly: “A mendacious description prepared for commercial use. Worth seeing and hearing only through the performance and singing of Diana Ross. "

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The New York Times, October 19, 1972, p. 56
  2. ↑ Variety, October 18, 1972, p. 18
  3. ↑ Lady Sings the Blues on rogerebert.com
  4. ↑ Chicago Tribune, October 27, 1972. Section 2, p. 1.
  5. ↑ Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1972. Part IV, p. 1.
  6. ^ The New Yorker, Nov. 4, 1972, p. 152
  7. ^ Critique in the time of November 23, 1973
  8. ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 718
  9. ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 575
  10. ↑ Lady Sings the Blues. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 23, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 

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