Unseen Aretha Franklin footage created into doco masterpiece
Priceless 40-year-old footage of Aretha Franklin has found its way into the hands of a visionary filmmaker. The result is a perfect chronicle of ‘The Queen of Soul’ at the peak of her powers.
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The perfection has always been there for all to hear.
Now, with the belated release of Amazing Grace, all can finally see it too.
This magically uplifting documentary leads you to a room where one of the greatest musical performances of the past century took place.
The year was 1972, and singer Aretha Franklin was already renowned far and wide as ‘The Queen of Soul’.
At the height of her powers as an incomparable purveyor of rhythm and blues, Franklin took the radical step of recording a live album of the gospel music that forged her golden gifts at a young age.
Her record label was not thrilled by the move, believing the project to be commercial poison. The power-that-be were so very wrong. The album, titled Amazing Grace, went on to sell in the millions around the world.
The late director Sydney Pollack was entrusted with capturing Franklin creating this towering work of aural art for cinematic posterity. Without going into too fine a detail, he stuffed the whole thing up by failing to synch the cameras with the venue’s sound system.
Incredibly, this priceless footage was left on the shelf for over four decades until another filmmaker finally worked out a way to properly weld the audio back on to the vision.
All you will be treated to in Amazing Grace is a straight chronicle of Franklin’s incredibly moving masterpiece, crafted over two nights with a local community choir inside a small Baptist Church in Los Angeles.
All the places you will be taken to by Franklin’s twelve sublime renditions of homegrown spirituals and time-honoured standards cannot be found on any map.
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For some numbers, Franklin accompanies herself on the piano. For others, she stands alone with a microphone and calibrates her vocals to work as one with the glorious strains of the choir.
This is history being made. This is music at its most powerful and totally embracing: awash with all the joy, sorrow and wonder of life itself.
AMAZING GRACE (G)
Rating: Five stars
Director: Alan Elliott, Sydney Pollack
Starring: Aretha Franklin
Find Leigh on twitter @leighpaatsch or on Instagram here @leighpaatsch