“I want to know why all the girl singers crack up. They crack up!” That’s Tony Bennett, in voiceover, musing aloud about the fate of the subject of “Billie,” an absorbing new documentary about mast…
. Maybe Bennett was also thinking of Judy Garland when he said, almost naively, that as the years progress in these divas’ careers, “something tragic happens. I want to know what that is.”
In an introduction at the film’s festival premiere, one of the producers said she didn’t want Holiday to be remembered as “just a victim.
Despite her descent into hard drugs, and some headline-making busts beginning in ’47, Holiday managed to avoid melting down as a musician. In one moment late in the film, the bassist on her final recording sessions talks about a photo he took of her in the studio, emaciated and sadly leaning over a vodka glass, saying he felt he captured “the shadow of death.” Seeing that photo onscreen, you might agree.
If her troubles are well established enough that there probably won’t be any controversy about how she’s portrayed in “Billie,” there could be a bit of blowback over the colorization all these performance segments and still photos have been subjected to. The filmmakers have said they turned a good deal of that black-and-white into color to help make Holiday feel vital and relevant to a younger audience.
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