In the year approaching her 87th Birthday Broadway Legend Elaine Stritch allowed first time Director Chiemi Karasawa to follow her around and film her warts and all resulting in this compelling new documentary. A brave move for someone battling with diabetes and failing health who is determined to keep performing even though it seems such a toll on her both physically and mentally.
Ms Stritch’s career stretches back over six decades and looking through all the archival footage and some of the glorious photographs of the past, one is simply overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of her work. She really is the old-fashioned definition of a ‘star’ which is obvious with not just all the award-winning roles that she created but her boundless style that she imbued in every single part.
As the camera relentlessly trailed the indomitable performer as she gets ready for her latest one woman show, so close that at one time she balled the cameraman out for coming into tight ‘goddam it’s not a skin commercial ‘, this cinema verite style showed Ms Stritch at her most vulnerable. There is a scene where she is visibly very extremely upset and totally disorientated during a pernicious diabetes episode and suddenly her brash confident persona disappears and all we see is a frightened old lady.
A disarmingly frank Ms Stritch refuses to call herself old …. she prefers to say that she is ‘getting older’ as we are all, a fact that seems to give her comfort. When she touches on the topic of death, she claims that her fear of dying fires her adrenaline, and insists that she focuses on enjoying her longevity but there are some occasions where that doesn’t always seem to ring true.
This highly personal film gives us some tense heart-wrenching moments that can turn into scenes of real joy. There is a time when Ms Stritch is having a Tech rehearsal for her Show at NY’s Town Hall and she cannot remember a single lyric to the Sondheim songs that she has sung for decades. She leaves the stage totally distraught but then some hours later comes back to give such an amazing spine-tingling near perfect performance that shows in a instance what a real trooper this remarkable woman is. A nice touch to this heart-warming documentary were the interviews with other actors and co-stars who had such unfettered enthusiasm and respect for her as an actor and as a person that they truly loved. The late James Gandolfini went one stage further with his tribute by claiming that if he and Ms Stritch had met when they both 35 years old they would have most likely had a torrid love affair that would have ended really badly.
One of the many highlights of her long career was in the original 1970 production of ‘Company’ where she got to first sing the infamous ‘The Ladies Who Lunch’. However it is another Sondheim classic that she has since claimed as her own, and is nowhere more appropriate than now when she never fails to bring the house down with ‘I’m Still Here’.
This is a spell-binding must-see tribute to a helluva wonderful old Broad. A sheer joy.
P.S. This movie ends with her buying a Condo in her hometown in Michigan and she is finally threatening to retire. She is featured in Rick McKay’s documentary ‘Broadway : Beyond The Golden Age’ due to be released later this year, so we haven’t seen the last of her yet.
