Diana Ross

  • Mahogany (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) It’s a disservice to insist that a film should work on all cylinders before finding some value to it. Mahogany, in telling us about a black female fashion model/designer trying to succeed in a tough business in the company of difficult men, is almost a big pile of episodic nonsense, flitting from one dramatic happening to another. This is a film that advances its story by having characters drive fast and die in a crash, freeing their spouse to get close to someone else. But Mahogany is not meant to be a story: It’s about getting Diana Ross to look terrific in high-end fashion outfits (including a few that she designed herself) and getting in a weirdly contrived romance with Lady Sings the Blues screen partner Billy Dee Williams (but only after the wild photographer played by Anthony Perkins is out of the picture… and the French count as well, since this is that kind of film). It’s a film about gloss and fleeting moments, but not necessarily a strong story that makes sense. As such, it often works better than you’d think. Ross is almost always a pleasure to look at, and the film can string along a few pretty sequences. They’re not necessarily strung along in a way that makes sense, but that’s Mahogany. From a historical perspective, there’s something more interesting to say about Mahogany being a film by a black director (Motown founder Berry Gordie!) featuring two leading black performers – especially given its place alongside middle-period Blaxploitation and prior to the genre-killer that was The Wiz. It portrays black characters engaged in activism and being successful in their own fields and, as such, suggests a different 1980s for black film if The Wiz hadn’t been such a flop. Today, you can’t really call it a good movie – but it’s certainly worth a gleeful look for the costumes, Ross, a big unabashed mid-1970s period feel and bizarre plotting turns. Mahogany does not fire on all cylinders… but it’s fun enough based on what does work.

  • Lady Sings the Blues (1972)

    Lady Sings the Blues (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) One of the first musical biographies made by and for black audiences, Lady Sings the Blues still feels modern in how it treats its central character Billie Holliday—even as it does rely on the classical musical biography elements of tough childhoods, early discrimination and mid-career substance addiction. Diana Ross is impressive as Holliday, while surrounded by good actors such as Billy Dee Williams and an early non-comic (and non-moustached) performance from Richard Pryor. The music is quite good if you’re into early jazz (although there’s some anachronistic material there), and the atmosphere of early black music performances is evocative—even as Holliday goes out on tour with a white band. I gather that it’s not faithful at all to Holliday’s life, but this all blurs with distance and doesn’t stop the film from standing up on its own. Lady Sings the Blues hasn’t aged as much as similar film of the time because it’s anchored in solid (if familiar) material, and treats its characters with modern sensibilities. One wonders about how the then-popular blaxploitation genre paved the way for this specific biography.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, May 2021) I have a feeling I’d like Lady Sings the Blues far more had I seen it in theatres in 1972 rather than fifty years later. It’s not that it’s a bad film – but what was new and interesting about it in 1972 – the grittiness, the denunciation of racism, the dramatic arc of a self-destructive singer, Diana Ross‘ performance from as Billie Holiday – all feels obvious, maybe even perfunctory today. Lady Sings the Blues follows a now-obvious dramatic arc for musical biopics. While there’s little bad to say about Ross, or the able supporting performance from Billy Dee Williams (in his pre Lando Calrissian days, another “less impressive now than in 1972” thing), the film itself feels intensely familiar today. I’ll note for the record that we’re not necessarily any better than audiences in 1972 – contemporary reviews also noted the clichés, so they feel even more striking after fifty more years of repetition. But it does make Lady Sings the Blues feel more generic than it should, and the ultimate proof of that would be that it took until I logged the film in my notes that I realized that I had already seen it less than a year ago. Now that’s embarrassing.

  • The Wiz (1978)

    The Wiz (1978)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) The 1970s were a dark, sad decade for movie musicals, and The Wiz does nothing to change my mind about it. This musical remake of The Wizard of Oz uses black actors and a modern-day urban setting, but seems determined to waste both its premise and its potential. There was a lot of it to start with, what with a cast that starts with Diana Ross and then goes on to Richard Pryor and Michael Jackson. The surprisingly slow start sets the tone for the disappointment to come, what with Ross looking far too old to play a teenager, and a film that appears determined to suppress any of her natural sex appeal. It gets better once she starts to sing, but not all that much. Michael Jackson fares much better in what is probably his finest screen role, nearly unrecognizable as the Scarecrow, but with his very distinctive voice shining through. Meanwhile, Pryor is in-keeping with the impact of the movie, a disappointment as the Wizard that undermines even an already-undermined character. As a clone of its original inspiration, The Wiz isn’t all that good: Occasionally too scary for kids, far too dull for adults, it also takes many of the original film’s most satisfying (but not necessarily the most realistic) plot points and blurs them into meaninglessness. The production design can be imaginative and ambitious at times, but it’s not successful at what it does. The ending is exceptionally disappointing, running three musical numbers too long and delving into cheap pop philosophy to overstate what was perfectly obvious in the original. The only musical number that works, both on a musical level and a narrative one is the insanely catchy “Ease on Down”, which is worth saving from the rest of this overlong misfire. Reading about the film’s complicated production history is instructive in understanding why it ended up being so disappointing, but this is the result we’re stuck with. (Even Xanadu was more fun than this, if not necessarily more coherent or less dated to the disco era.) Alas, the damage done by The Wiz didn’t stop at the movie itself or its audience: Historically, this film was a notorious flop in every way, and is seen as having led to the end of the era for black-focused films as reinvigorated by the blaxploitation movement. If that’s correct, The Wiz has a lot more to answer for than for wasting more than two hours of everyone’s time even forty years later. (Minus five minutes for “Ease on Down”, because it’s that good.)