Amazing Grace: The story of the electrifying film Aretha Franklin | The music

In Amazing Grace, Aretha Franklin's revealing concert film, she barely speaks. Aside from a muffled demand for water and a silent discussion with his music director, there is no doubt. Instead, she focuses entirely on the spirit of gospel music that she came to play during the two-day historical film shoot, which took place in January 1972 at the New Temple Baptist Mission Church in New York. Los Angeles. "She came for a religious service," said the Guardian, the niece of singer Sabrina Owens, who controls the estate. "The way she was driving was totally different from the one we would see at one of her pop concerts. His eyes were closed. His head was thrown back. She was entirely focused on something higher.

Witnessing the blatant contrast between this self-effacement and the star power of his vocal performance is only one element that sharply distinguishes the viewing of the Amazing Grace movie from listening to the album of the same name, released at the end of 1972. Double-set became Franklin's best-selling album, as well as the largest collection of gospel of all time. Meanwhile, the film remained unfinished for 38 years, hampered by gobsmacking mistakes, poor planning, and ultimately by Franklin's health problems. After a series of complex and decided events, the film was finally completed by producer Alan Elliott last fall, allowing fleeting pbadages in two US cities in December. Amazing Grace has just launched a larger version, followed by an international deployment on April 19th.

Although Elliott completed the film, he had no connection with the original shoot (he was seven years old at the time). His initial connection took place in the early 90s, while he was a producer for Atlantic Records. Jerry Wexler, who has co-produced many of Franklin's biggest hits for the label, mentioned this feature film to Elliott, a fan of the album Amazing Grace. The two men had brief interviews at the time with the man who made the film in 1972, Sydney Pollack. However, a decade and a half pbaded before Elliott again began to encourage Wexler to turn to the film, which would lead to a reconnection with Pollack. At that time, the director was severely suffering from cancer, a disease that would make him die the following year, in 2008. According to Elliott, Pollack would have told him: "You know this film better than me. You finish it.

Soon he discovered what a daunting task it would be. If the film was not finished, it's because Pollack failed to take the most rudimentary steps to synchronize the sound of the music with the images of the film. All that would have been necessary to achieve this was to use a very common cinematographic device: a flapper that opens at the beginning of a movie and closes at the end of it, thus marking the visual segment to connect to his movie. sonic corollary. In this case, "the camera guys turned on and off their camera," Elliott said. "So, there were, like, 15 or 20 different starting points on a given piece of film. It's just unfathomable.

The result left about 2,000 pieces of film without sync points. Such a colossal error would perhaps never have occurred had the film studio hired the original type that they would have been asked to direct the project – James Signorelli, who served as director of photography at Super Fly, a film that has managed the feat of matching his dialogue to the music life created by Curtis Mayfield. But like Pollack's previous film, They Shoot Horses, did not win him an Oscar nomination for best director, the studio was baptized with the biggest name. According to Elliott, Pollack did not do any pre-production work for Amazing Grace and did not even write the names of the songs afterwards.

Although the valve monitoring may have damaged the original version, Elliott thinks it has created a secondary gain. "All these cameras that came and went, turned on and off, gave this energy to the images and also allowed them to take these beautiful pictures," he said.

The tedious work of finding the junction points between the image and the sound of the film was entrusted to a special technical team in 2008. "They spent three weeks synchronizing the 13 or 14 hours of film," Elliott said.

Even in this case, it would take another 10 years before the lingering legal issues involving the singer and the film are resolved. For a long time, no one could find a contract signed with Franklin to approve the release of the film. Once they finally did it, in 2013 she challenged it, thus preventing the screenings planned in several film festivals at that time. Franklin's niece says she does not know why the singer kept things in place. "She never talked about the movie," said Owen, adding that she knew that her aunt had cherished the original performance.

In the past, Elliott had said that Franklin had asked for $ 5 million for final approval of the film, but he now believes that the main problem that has affected things in the end is the worsening of his state of health. "It was a slow, slow death she had to go through," he said. "If she were to tour or advertise around this movie, I would understand her decision. If she had been healthy, I think the movie would be out. "

Owens said she had no hesitation in approving the release of the film several months after the death of her aunt. "Everyone in the family had the same feeling," she said. "There is nothing offensive in the film. If she was opposed, she would have warned someone. This did not happen.

For Elliott, the film has great value outside of the album. For recording, Franklin added studio instruments, such as a celesta, and also superimposed part of his voice. On the other hand, the film "is exactly what was in the room," he said. "It's more truthful."

The visual elements also allow viewers to see the striking effect of Franklin's music on the faithful who make up the bulk of the audience, as well as on The Southern California Community Choir, a 30-member group that supported it. "These are the characters in the movie," said Elliott. "These are the people who urge her to make sure to go further in Amazing Grace."

It's also moving to see Franklin working with his band, including Cornell Dupree, Chuck Rainey and Bernard Purdie. "These guys are what Jerry Wexler called" the profane rhythm section, "said Elliott." He had them rehearsed with her for 30 days in the church and with the choir, to get back what was going on. he called "the pace". "

It's also about seeing the singer at such a young age. At 29, we see his deference to his father, Reverend CL Franklin, who, on the second day, is declaimed in one segment. We also see Franklin's fear for his mentor, the gospel star Clara Ward, who was among the audience of the second show. At the back of the church, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts, who were in Los Angeles at the time to record Exile on Main Street. Like all those present, they let themselves go to the ecstatic devotion of performances such as "Holy Sacred, God will take care of you and incredible grace". Each of them lasted from seven to eleven minutes, elaborated by Franklin's cries, tears, and fillings. Her pbadionate filigrees aroused empathic reactions from the choir and were supported by MC, Reverend James Cleveland. At the heart of it all was a singer away from the crowd but connected, basically, to the eternal. "Jerry Wexler called her" Our Lady of Mysterious Grief, "said Elliott," but it shows that she is "Our Lady of Mysterious Joy." She becomes a woman's tabula rasa. We want it, it's something very human and unique to the heart, it's Aretha.