Amazing Grace

In 1972, Aretha Franklin recorded her first gospel album, “Amazing Grace” at the New Temple Missionary church – over two nights with the backing of the Southern California Community Choir with a live audience. The album became the best selling live gospel album of all time and the biggest selling of her career. Director Sydney Pollock also filmed the recording sessions, but due to not using clapperboards, it turned out to be impossible to sync sound and vision for general release (as far as I can tell, Pollock never made another concert film). In around 2010 producer Alan Elliot managed to sync the film, and planned to release it, but Franklin sued to prevent the release and it was delayed until now, a few months after her death.

This is an uneven piece of work. The footage is pretty raw – constantly slipping out of focus, zooming around the space often distracted by anything shiny going on at the time (the second night’s footage, with Mick Jagger in the audience, is particularly prone to just occasionally showing “hey, here’s Mick Jagger” – although it is nice to see visual prove that Charlie Watts, sitting next to him, smiles sometimes). And Franklin is shown physically sweating fairly constantly, and she has virtually no banter or action between songs – she’s just there to sing the songs. But she’s still extraordinary, and this is a document of an extraordinary performance. I occasionally complain about singers who go for every note except the ones that are actually in the songs – but with Aretha, everything is forgiven when she sings. She’s got a voice and a presence that commands attention, and everything that is significant about this film is due to her. And on the plus side, there’s not a lot of faffing about getting in the way of her – it knows, most of the time, to sit the camera down and just watch the extraordinary happen. So, on that basis, recommended. Because for whatever reasons, cinema never used Aretha Franklin very much (it’s basically this and two songs in Blues Brothers movies) and any chance to encounter her has to be cherished.