The First Lady of Song finally speaks — through everyone else.
Writer-director Charlotte Zwerin performs sleight of hand with this beautifully composed documentary, originally produced for public television's American Masters series. Created nearly four years after Ella Fitzgerald's death, Zwerin's film uses the lush voice and superb repertoire of "the First Lady of Song" to provide continuity while assembling convincing, if composite, narrative quotes gleaned from various interviews. The latter are noteworthy given the singer's lifelong modesty and insistence on privacy. Archival footage of early performances, as well as later television appearances, capture Ella's pilgrimage from Depression-era New York, through her discovery at the Apollo Theater and subsequent emergence as a swing vocalist and on to her long career as a matchless pop and jazz stylist. Tony Bennett is a sympathetic narrator, while added affection and insight are provided through
Direction
Zwerin's composite narrative is documentary sorcery
Editing
Voice-as-ghost, stitching decades into coherence
Director
Charlotte Zwerin
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Ella Fitzgerald gave only a handful of interviews in her entire career, making Zwerin's patchwork technique virtually the only way to 'hear' her story.
The film captures Fitzgerald's deliberate construction of a non-threatening public persona that allowed her to transcend segregation while frustrating biographers forever.
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