Lady Sings the Blues
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Time Out says
A staple biopic of Billie Holiday with all the time-hallowed mundanity of the genre (its preoccupation with her heroin addiction, for instance, or the sequence that 'explains' the song 'Strange Fruit'). What it tells you most about is those kitschy concepts of 'stardom' and the like on a soap-opera/backstage drama level. Diana Ross, managing to avoid doing a Supremes-type number and keeping the songs this side of pastiche, comes out with a straightforward performance that only modulates to pure DR in an outrageous last shot that reduces Billie Holiday's death to the transience of a newspaper cutting, while holding on Diana Ross doing the pinnacle of success bit.Release details
UK release:
1972
Duration:
144 mins
Cast and crew
Director:
Cast:
Scatman Crothers, Virginia Capers, Sid Melton, Paul Hampton, James Callahan, Richard Pryor, Billy Dee Williams, Diana Ross, Ned Glass
Music:
Production Designer:
Editor:
Cinematography:
Screenwriter:
Suzanne De Passe, Chris Clark, Terence McCloy
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