女士唱蓝调

Dir. Sidney J. Furie. 1973, 144 mins. 35mm. With Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor. In her big screen debut, Diana Ross plays jazz icon Billie Holiday in a performance that earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, as well as a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Based on Holiday’s best-selling autobiography, the film charts her rise from a traumatic youth to a fledgling career, a fraught romance with her manager (Williams), eventual superstardom, and a derailing addiction. “One of the great performances of 1972. [Ross] doesn’t sing in her own style, and she never tries to imitate Holiday, but she sings somehow in the manner of Holiday. There is an uncanny echo, a suggestion, and yet the style is a tribute to Billie Holiday, not an impersonation.”—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times