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James Erskine: Billie (2019), a documentary portrait of Billie Holiday, based on the research by Linda Lipnack Kuehl.
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Billie / Billie.
GB 2019. An Altitude and MPC presentation of a New Black Films and Reliance Entertainment Productions Documentary in association with Concord Music, BBC, Belga Films, Multiprises LLC and UMG. P: Victoria Gregory, Barry Clark Ewers, James Erskine, Laure Vaysse. Co-P: Shianne Brown. EX: Michelle Smith, Alex Holmes, Sophia Dilley, Emma Cahusac, Will Clarke, Andy Mason, Mike Runagall, Deepak Nayar, Emil Elmer. Co-EX: David Blackman, David Inkeles. Consultant P: Toby Byron.
D+SC: James Erskine [based on the interviews made by and manuscripts written by Linda Lipnack Kuehl]. DP: Tim Cragg. S: Tom Wollaert (sound supervisor, audio restoration engineer), Patrick Hubart (re-recording mixer, sound editor, sound mixer). ED: Avdhesh Mohla.
[A documentary portrait about jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915–1959), born Eleanora Fagan, and Linda Lipnack Kuehl's (1940–1978) quest to write her definitive biography.]
Featuring: Credited: Billie Holiday, Linda Lipnack Kuehl, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, narcotics agent Jimmy Fletcher, Bobby Tucker, Jimmy Rowles, Sylvia Syms, etc. – Not listed in the end credits: Michele Smith, Louis Armstrong, Skinny Davenport (pimp), Jonathan "Jo" Jones, John Simmons, Melba Liston, Barney Josephson, John Hammond, Memry Midgett, Pigmeat Markham, Detroit Red, Billy Eckstine, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Artie Shaw, Sid Weiss, Mae Weiss, etc.
[M: not credited: Billie Holiday as composer, writer of lyrics and / or singer.] ["
Billie Holiday's estate, acquired in 2012 by music company Concord, came on board as producers." The Guardian, 6 Nov 2020.]
[Soundtrack album, Verve Records 2020:]
1. Now Or Never (feat. Sy Oliver & His Orchestra) – Billie Holiday (3:18)
2. God Bless The Child – Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra (3:10)
3. Hoppin’ Around – The Sonhouse All Stars (2:37)
4. The Blues Are Brewin’ (feat. John Simmons & His Orchestra) – Billie Holiday (3:04)
5. Funeral In New Orleans – The Sonhouse All Stars (2:11)
6. Fine And Mellow – Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra (3:17)
7. Strange Fruit – Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra (3:12)
8. Just One More Chance – Billie Holiday & Ray Ellis and His Orchestra (3:46)
9. My Man – Billie Holiday (2:58)
10. I Only Have Eyes For You – Billie Holiday (2:54)
11. I’ll Never Smile Again – Billie Holiday & Ray Ellis and His Orchestra (3:27)
12. Don’t Explain (Live At Carnegie Hall / 1956) – Billie Holiday (2:28)
13. Porgy – Billie Holiday (2:54)
[Also in the film: "Saddest Tale"].
Colourized. Colourist: Marian Amaral.
98 min
Festival premiere: 5 Sep 2019 Telluride Film Festival.
French premiere: 30 Sep 2020.
British premiere: 13 Nov 2020.
US premiere: 4 Dec 2020.
Finnish premiere: 20 Nov 2020, released by Cinema Mondo with Finnish / Swedish intertitles and subtitles by Outi Kainulainen / Joanna Erkkilä. Intertitles in Finnish and Swedish only.
Corona emergency security: 25% capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
Viewed at Kino Engel 1, Helsinki, 20 Nov 2020.
LOGLINE
"
Crafted from extraordinary unheard interviews, and restoring key performances into color for the first time, BILLIE is the story of the singer who changed the face of American music, and the journalist who died trying to tell it."
SYNOPSIS
"
Billie - BILLIE HOLIDAY, one of the greatest voices of all time, a woman of breath-taking talent and global popularity, was throughout her short life a figure of controversy - a black woman in a white man’s world, a victim and a rebel whose infamous Strange Fruit, the first protest song, earned her powerful enemies. She was also an enigma, her telling of her own life story a mix of half truths and free-form improvisations."
"Then in the late 1960’s journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biography of Billie. Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer’s short, tumultuous life."
"Raw, emotional and brutally honest, these incredible testimonies ranged from musical greats like Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sylvia Syms and Count Basie to her cousin, school friends, lovers, lawyers, pimps and even the FBI agents who arrested her. But Linda’s book was never finished and the tapes unplayed – until now."
"With unprecedented and exclusive access to Linda's astonishing 200 hours of never-before-heard interviews, BILLIE showcases an American legend, capturing her depths and complexity through the voices of those who knew her best. Painstakingly restored with footage and stills colorized by one of the leading color artists, it is an arresting and powerful tale of one of the greatest singers who ever lived, and of Linda Lipnack Kuehl, the woman who would sacrifice her life in trying to tell it."
TELLURIDE 2019 PROGRAM NOTE (Fiona Armour): "
By the late 70s, journalist and Billie Holiday superfan Linda Lipnack Kuehl had amassed hundreds of hours of recorded interviews in an effort to finish a book on the mysterious and tragic jazz icon. These tapes—with Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Sylvia Sims, Sid Weiss and others—remained unreleased following Kuehl’s sudden death. Forty years later, director James Erskine weaves Kuehl’s recordings into a powerful portrait of a thoroughly modern woman, as complicated and layered as her music. BILLIE reveals the singer’s magnetism, her darkness, her struggles against discrimination and segregation, and with addiction, tales of the men who couldn’t control her ... a hero who was victimized but never a victim. And Kuehl never shied away from the tough questions—this is a ruthlessly honest story of one woman told by another, the two united in their quests for authenticity." – Fiona Armour
AA: I don't know if it's a commonplace to make a comparison between two great performers who were born in the same year, became victims of untold suffering in childhood, changed their names, transcended their circumstances, created vast legacies of timeless interpretations as singers and songwriters, both globally known for their instantly recognizable voices, and died before they reached the age of 50: "La Môme" Édith Piaf (1915–1963) and "Lady Day" Billie Holiday (1915–1959).
Watching James Erskine's richly rewarding portrait documentary made me think about Olivier Dahan's Édith Piaf biopic La Môme (2007) in which Marion Cotillard gave a legendary performance in the leading role. Piaf and Holiday experienced things far beyond what anybody should endure, and agony was palpable in their performances until the end.
Already as a child, Holiday became a victim of rape, abuse and prostitution, and all her life she had to endure brutal racist persecution, sexual violence, duplicity, fraud and theft from the men and the managers in her life. The injustice she was made to suffer was extraordinary, but even more extraordinary was that she refused to assume the role of a victim.
Instead, Holiday became a fighter who lived her life to the extreme, becoming rich and famous despite racist discrimination, singing defiantly "Strange Fruit" every night although it meant losing her most lucrative gigs, burning her candle from both ends as an alcoholic, drug addict and "sex machine", and giving great performances as a singer to the end.
James Erskine bases his movie on the
fabula and
sujet narrative structure: the
fabula is the mystery of Billie Holiday's life, and the
sujet is Linda Lipnack Kuehl's eight-year quest to interview everybody who knew her. We keep meeting and hearing key colleagues and witnesses from John Hammond to Lester Young, from Sylvia Syms to Michele Smith. But incredibly, we also get to hear the cynical confessions of her abusers, starting from the pimp of her childhood.
In the age of Me Too and Black Lives Matter, this movie is burningly topical.
But Billie Holiday's artistic legacy is ageless. "I heard a singer who was like an improvising horn player", said John Hammond. "There was a truth in every note" says Sylvia Syms who also quotes Billie Holiday's own definitions of her interpretations: you have to sing like you almost cry to make the audience cry. You have to sing like you almost laugh to make the audience laugh.
For me, Billie Holiday has always been an impressive presence, but I'm not a Billie Holiday person. I acknowledge the power of her personality, the originality of her interpretation and the subtlety of her sensuality, but I sense something unsettling in the melancholy that I cannot relate to.
Jazz is
terra incognita for me, which is why I five years ago embarked on a project to start from scratch and asked
Emu Lehtinen of Digelius Music to select for me a "
jazz record of the week". Billie Holiday was Emu's greatest favourite, and unsurprisingly, one of his first selections was the ten disc box set
Lady Day – The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933–1944 (including Columbia's Brunswick, Vocalion and OKeh labels). So I was on my way, and I even liked the five disc box set of her late albums, including All Or Nothing At All, one of her very last ones. Although Billie Holiday had become physically ravaged, I sensed her spirit growing stronger.
James Erskine's film increases my admiration for Billie Holiday, most impressively because of her commitment to "Strange Fruit". It was a favourite for Peter von Bagh who discussed it in his radio programmes and concert specials since the early 1970s. It would have been rewarding to hear Emu Lehtinen and Peter von Bagh discussing this impressive film.
It must have been a daunting project to restore and make fully audible the hundreds of interviews and to collect the mosaic of film snippets and rare photographs. The movie has been made to look and sound as smooth as possible.
Too smooth and Photoshopped to my taste. The colourized images and passages are marvels of modern digital technology, but I prefer to remain a partisan of rough authenticity.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:
