TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

MarkJGarcia A young 28 year old Diana Ross earned an Oscar nomination for this 1972 movie about Billie Holiday. "Lady Sings the Blues" is a song written by jazz singer Billie Holiday, and jazz pianist Herbie Nichols. It is the title song to her 1956 album. In my opinion I thought Diana Ross did an OK job at portraying the troubled Billie Holiday. The many ups and downs of this famous singer are brought to life with Diana's performance. A co-star in the movie who I thought did a great job was 32 year old Richard Pryor. Pryor came through really well as someone who offered much support to Billie Holiday from very early on. Although there is some doubt of the accuracy of the book in which this movie is based, I still found it enjoyable enough to watch.

chileflower I can remember watching this movie multiple times with my father. As a young black girl I got it!!! I've read opinions that criticize the fact that the movie didn't focus on the music or the other artist of the time. The point is. . .get ready. It was an autobiographical account of Billie's life.I can remember seeing the movie and actually being moved to go to the library to check out a book to find out who this lady really was. I think Diana did a damn good job putting her artistic touch to portraying Billie's life, her struggles, vices, love and yes, her music. The fact is, is that the movie wasn't about Billie's making of jazz as it was about the struggles of a young black woman with a passion for singing moved by segregation and Jim crow and having to constantly adjust and reinvent herself to cope in a society that loved and hated her all at the same time.Heavy. I'm not partial to Diana Ross one way or another. But the lady's got skills. And if the emotion she put into playing this role wasn't enough to tug at your heartstrings, then you ain't human.Some say the film lacked non continuity. Such is life. I get it. We were made to reflect on where she had been in order to know how she got to be who she was. This movie while of course jazz inspired and musical, was a deeper reflection into the cracks and fissures that shaped a life. Billie Holiday.I thank my father for his love of good movies and for sharing movies like, "Lady Sings the Blues" with me.I'm out! Peace.

ianlouisiana Billie Holliday made some lovely records with the Teddy Wilson Orchestra in the 1930s.She made some good records for jazz impresario Norman Granz towards the end of her career,their merit largely due to her accompanying musicians as her voice was shot to pieces by then.What happened in between is the area covered by Sidney Furie's "Lady sings the blues"which uses the title if not much else of her 1958 ghosted autobiography.Like fellow 50s icons James Dean and Marilyn Monroe,Miss Holliday has achieved a post mortem fame far exceeding that she enjoyed whilst she was alive.She is repeatedly presented as a proto-lesbian,proto-bisexual,proto-feminist,proto-strong black woman or whatever label people who think it empowers them to attribute their beliefs to a dead person who is consequently unable to refute them choose to stick on her. My interest in Miss Holliday is strictly musical.In my opinion she was a considerable artist despite her lifestyle,not because of it. She clearly had some unsuitable male friends,but she wasn't a "victim". If she enjoyed the company of people in "The Life",well,she was all grown up,it was her business and her decision. Playing Miss Holliday in the film,Miss Diana Ross does not try to imitate her,nor does she resemble her in any way.She sings songs associated with her quite competently,and performs rather than acts,as top class singers(Frank Sinatra,Peggy Lee)tended to do.She is clearly a charismatic performer,and that shows on the screen.Unfortunately she does not share Miss Holliday's talent for turning dross into gold,for dross is what "Lady sings the blues" quite evidently is. Sensationalist and exploitative,it concentrates on the subject's sex life and drug addiction,a particularly unpleasant shot of Miss Ross sprawled unconscious over the toilet is my defining image of the film. Clearly Mr Furie was aiming high. If you want to get a more realistic view of Miss Holliday's life read "Wishing on the Moon" by Donald Clarke.Her early recordings are available (now out of copyright) on a multitude of labels,generally the only difference being the packaging.Listen to the freshness and innocence of "I wished on the moon" and forget that this terrible film was ever made.

Ed Uyeshima The recent death of Richard Pryor prompted me to look at the 2005 DVD package of 1972's "Lady Sings the Blues", which proves the then-young comedian to be a fine actor in the meaty supporting role of Piano Man. Even though he was a master stand-up comic, it's still too bad he never pursued roles of a similar dramatic caliber since he obviously had the talent. Similarly, Diana Ross never fulfilled the promise of her big screen debut in the title role as legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-59).Bearing no physical and little vocal resemblance to Holiday, Ross somehow gets under her true-life character's skin much like Joaquin Phoenix does in "Walk the Line" or Jamie Foxx in "Ray". Thirty-three years have elapsed since I first saw this movie, and it is with a certain amount of regret that I report that Ross as an actress has not been anywhere near this good since then. Granted she only has three features under her belt, 1975's "Mahogany" reflected an ego run amok, and she was disturbingly miscast in 1978's "The Wiz". From the opening scene where she is suffering through heroin withdrawal in raw, harrowing detail to her sultrier nightclub performances, she manages to be incendiary by her sheer will. She is even convincing in the early scenes where she is barely a teenager. Her vocal performances really don't evoke Holiday's earthier style, though to Ross's credit, her vivid renditions of standards such as "Mean to Me", "Fine and Mellow" and "Gimme a Pigfoot (and a Bottle of Beer)" don't sound like Supremes redux either.This achievement is all the more impressive since director Sidney J. Furie, a journeyman filmmaker at best, has surrounded Ross with an unwieldy rags-to-riches biopic that should have been edited down from its 144-minute running time. The screenplay - credited to Chris Clark, Suzanne De Passe and Terence McCloy (none of whom wrote a movie script before or since) based in part on Holiday's autobiography - plays fast and loose with the facts and piles on the clichés in true Oscar-baiting fashion. The drug-related scenes are powerful, though they eventually start to feel like condescending plot devices to make the viewer sympathize with Holiday for the persecution she experienced at the hands of abusive men and a bigoted society. Moreover, as Furie discloses on the accompanying audio commentary, the dialogue for several scenes is improvised by the actors, for example, the unnecessarily lengthy Club Manhattan sequence, where the lack of discipline becomes wearing.Contrary to the fact that Holiday's true life story has been well documented and interest in her legacy increased, the filmmakers altered events and people in order to maintain interest from what they thought were mainstream audiences at the time. Consequently, the character of Louis McKay, Holiday's love interest and eventual husband, played with toothsome charm by Billy Dee Williams, synthesizes a lot of men who came into her life and helped shape her career. The dramatized results leave out key figures of the jazz world like saxophonist Lester Young, trombonist Jimmy Monroe to whom Holiday was married, and record producer John Hammond, as well as Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Artie Shaw and Teddy Wilson--all important colleagues and mentors during the period covered in the film. Instead, we are given Holiday's story as filtered through Ross's own story, an observation confirmed by Ross herself on the accompanying 2005 making-of featurette.When the music is true to the period, it's quite wonderful, but composer Michel Legrand composed some gauzy, anachronistic interludes that sound like symphonic outtakes from his work on "Brian's Song". The costumes also have a Vegas revue feel, no surprise since designer Bob Mackie's flamboyant, early 1970's style is on full display here. For such an overlong movie, the ending feels quite truncated as newspaper clips are used to telegraph her eventual fate as Ross triumphantly sings her signature song, "God Bless the Child", in Carnegie Hall. Credit Motown mogul and Ross's Svengali, Berry Gordy, for having the fortitude, foresight and tenacity to oversee the project, and the DVD hammers that point in not only the overemphatic, only partially insightful commentary by Furie, Gordy and artists' manager Shelly Berger but also the making-of featurette which features Ross looking strangely youthful and Williams at least looking his age. There are several deleted scenes included in the DVD with no additional commentary from Furie, none refurbished and all understandably excised from the final cut.