Janis Joplin was sadly one of many rock stars to die young after overdosing on drugs. Unfortunately, this documentary is rather short on insight into who she was and why her life turned out the way it did. We're told she had a tough childhood, and then quickly, we're told how as a very young woman she ran away to San Francisco, became a singer and an addict, and nearly died. Yet all this is covered in just fifteen minutes; her career once famous fills out the rest of the programme, yet it might seem arguable that in a sense, the most important things in her life had already taken place before this began. There's also little discussion of her musical abilities; a lot about her personality and how she gave herself to her singing, but if her music doesn't move you, there's not a lot of dispassionate explanation here. A string of talking heads tell us how extraordinary, how full-of-life Janis was; but having watched them all, I still didn't feel like I knew her at all.
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paul2001sw-131 March 2016
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Of course I know who Janis Joplin was, who doesn't, but I was never a huge fan of her work, so I did not know anything about her life story.
And what a great story it was, told by those who knew Janis the most, the Documentary was loaded with interviews from the people closet to her who were there for the ride that was her life. Mixed in with a lot of archive footage of Joplin as well as a touching voice over of letters Joplin wrote to her family back home being read during the film.
But most importantly, lots of music was played. I've seen docs and other movies about major rock icons where the music was not center stage simple because of legal rights. Does not feel like Little Girl Blue had that problem, and I'm thankful, cause as much as her life was interesting, it's all about the music.
It was funny, entertaining, and centered on the rock and roll as they told the story of one of the greatest icons in music history. -
An experienced documentarist who poses her eye on one of the greatest in the history of music. Very remarkable the amount of footage of Janis in her glory days. Presetns a lot of testimonials from people very close to her(both professionally, and personally), which allows us to feel a little more closely, both the achievements and thesuccesses, as well as the sorrows and sufferings of the genius of Janis. Another positive aspect is the letters or written records of Janis. IT also lets us enjoy many moments of live music, which is always good in a music documentary. Very exciting and entertaining.
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barev-850941 November 2015Viewed at 2015 Venice Film Festival., "Janis, Little Girl Blue" by Amy Berg, With Alex Gibney, himself an outstanding documentarian acting as producer, is a Great Doc about a great American singer, Janis Joplin, who died too young on the verge of salvation.
Interviews with parents, sister, brother, surviving members of The Grateful Dead, Kris Kristofferson, and most surprising, Dick Cavett (1970). In a year of many good documentaries, this was the best of all -- a marvelous reconstruction of a tragic young life. Janis sang the blues with such conviction and such black feeling that even afro-Americans though she was black -- She died on October 4, 1970 in a Hollywood motel of an accidental heroin overdose at age 27 -- only two weeks after another rock legend, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. The film traces her life from humble origins in the nondescript north Texas town of Port Arthur, constant humiliation by her schoolmates because of her extreme nonconformity and relatively plain looks, up through her rise to prominence as the lead singer of the acid/rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company --one of the leading San Francisco rock groups of the mid sixties -- reaching the pinnacle when recognized as the top white blues singer of the age, her difficulties dealing with fame, her loneliness in the midst of adoring crowds, her battle with drug addiction, and finally her tragic early death on the verge of even wider fame and general acceptance by the serious music world.
Needless to say, the film is liberally spiced with clips from her amazing stage appearances, which is an added enrichment, but this is far from a mere excuse to present her songs -- far more a penetrating probe into the life of an extremely complex personality ---a true artist who became the victim of her own profound talent. Myself more or less a product of the psychedelic sixties, I left the vast Venice theater thoroughly emotionally drained and realizing I had just witnessed a remarkable film about a most remarkable life. Alex, Budapest -
realitycomments22 April 2016Maybe it's just me, but I can't seem to get enough Janis. I have read a biography on her and watched other films, as well as attended the stage play "Love, Janis" and I'm always wanting for more.
I rated this a nine because a near perfect documentary about Janis would be at least four hours, imho. There could have been more interviews with her sister and brother and others who knew her intimately. It focused on her person and her heart more than other things I've seen. I was only ten years old when she died and my family was as straight laced as Janis' and Port Arthur, so I don't remember any fan fare regarding her. I didn't fully experience her music until I was eighteen and I fell hard as a Janis fan.
Interesting point to younger generations is that the media always focuses on the San Francisco scene when it talks about the 60's and the hippy era, when most of the rest of the world at the time was really closer to Port Arthur.
Strongly recommend this gem for any Janis fan. You won't be bored and you will find another little piece of her heart you may not have known about before. I imagined that she had a big heart for people in general, and this documentary solidified that belief.
A comment in the film about the level of emotion she reached in her singing was at a high price and that was a prefect summation of the art that was Janis Joplin. -
JohnDeSando22 December 2015The recent documentary Amy, depicting singer Amy Winehouse's rise and fall at about the same age as Janis Joplin reminds me that all rockers are not the same, especially females. Janis: Little Girl Blue depicts Joplin as much more focused than Amy and much more in control of her own life. Except for in death, where both succumb to substance abuse, even the relatively more stable Amy.
This Janis doc does an effective job showing the arc of her brief life, from a country girl in Texas to the rocker who led the way for women in the industry and eventually the world. Why the eventual failure given her great fame and fortune? It's simple, really: She wanted to be loved, and not always finding that devotion, she could turn to music and drugs for support and fulfillment.
Along the way, the doc gives insight into what makes this blues mama run: In her own words she says ambition is the desire to be loved. She's not a "Cry Baby" about not getting the love she wanted from some of her friends and family; actually family members talk to us and appear to have supported her through it all.
Her straight-laced parents couldn't be expected to wholly embrace the counter-culture queen, who began innocently singing folk tunes in her early teens and ended singing blues that reminded one critic of "desperate mating calls." Professionally she gets plenty of love from the likes of Khris Kristofferson, whose Me & Bobby Magee was her best-selling single ever and band mate David Goetz, who observed that she turned into a caricature of the blues mama that the media had helped to create. Dick Cavett interviews her with an unusual affection different from his usually detached persona. At one point he can't remember if they were intimate—a nice touch of amnesia that doesn't belie a bit his attachment to her.
Janis: Little Girl Blue informs about Joplin's career from folk to hard blues, gives insight into the driving emotions of her ambition, and amply shows her singing talents that made her a child of Aretha Franklin and her own person.
A greatly satisfying bio of a great singer. -
clarkj-565-1613366 February 2016This documentary really brought me back to the 60s and 70s. It never ceases to amaze me how tough it is to be a creative artist, just think Brian Wilson or Amy Winehouse. We are introduced to Janis's early life and the many struggles she had to go through growing up. She leaves for California and finds her roots and her tribe with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The live performances really show the incredible rapport she had with her audience during a concert. Coming down from such a high must have been an insupportable task. Janis finds a true love during her time in Brazil which for her was very important. Her letters to her family and friends were filled with hope and optimism right up to her tragic death. Interviews with her various friends and colleagues all painted a picture of a very unique and spontaneous person. The world was truly inspired by a pure spirit.
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classicsoncall27 November 2017The fall of 1970 delivered a terrible gut punch with the passing of two rock icons, Jimi Hendrix on 9/18, and Janis Joplin on 10/4/70. I wouldn't go so far as to say they were 'idols' of mine, but I did hold their body of work in high regard, brief as their careers might have been. This recent documentary did much to confirm what I read about Janis in a recent book of her life. She was a lonely spirit, terribly insecure about her personal appearance and lack of meaningful relationships, finding her inner soul only when she was on stage and performing for the crowds that gave her the approbation she so desperately wanted and needed.
What this documentary offered that I particularly enjoyed was musical footage I hadn't seen before, including songs Janis performed that I'd never heard before, like the opening "Tell Your Momma". The story goes on to describe Janis's close relationship with her family that she tried to maintain during the course of her rising career, even though she wanted to leave her Port Arthur, Texas roots well behind her. Much of the on screen personal dialog is handled by her sister Laura throughout the picture, with occasional clips of brother Michael.
Fans of Joplin will know that her career breakout occurred with Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Monterey Pop Festival in June of 1967. In these music documentaries, I try to stay attentive to scenes that offer a glimpse of memorabilia from the era, and I was astonished to see a ticket for the Festival during a quick scene. It's not unusual to see tickets priced at five or six dollars back in the Sixties, the Beatles' concert at Shea Stadium would have set you back a whole five bucks. But for Monterey Pop - a stage front seat went for a 'Charitable Contribution'! There's something to be said about the good old days.
In any event, Janis Joplin has been and probably will remain my favorite female vocalist for a long time. There's something electrifying about her voice and the way she sustains that bluesy soul feeling in songs like "Cry Baby", "Maybe" and the song that epitomizes her life and tragic end, "Little Girl Blue". Listen to the words, and all the pain and sorrow is there that Janis experienced, and which unfortunately led to her premature death at the age of twenty seven. Man, I wish she were still around. -
moonspinner555 June 2016Amy Berg's documentary charting the course that blues and rock singer Janis Joplin took from her childhood hometown of Port Arthur, Texas to San Francisco and then Los Angeles in the 1960s is filled with great clips and fantastic music (particularly the performance of the lesser-known "Little Girl Blue" shown at the conclusion). However, there's nothing here--not even the reading of letters Janis wrote home to her family--that will surprise anyone who has followed Joplin's career since her untimely demise in October 1970. Although she lived a wild, scattered but full-blooded life in her 27 years, Joplin's recording career was extremely brief (two albums, one with her first band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, followed by a solo album, released posthumously). Janis as a human being was anything but predictable, and yet the myriad of documentaries chronicling her life and stardom all seem to cover the same territory, the sex-drugs-and-rock and roll high-life. Berg insulates Joplin here, as Joplin was insulated by the yes-men in her life who were trying to steer her career. We do not hear about the books Janis read (she was a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fan), the movies she saw, how she felt about the war in Vietnam or the hippie movement or her second-rate (for her) performance at Woodstock. She is, of course, a tragic figure in popular music, but fleshing out that figure--giving us some surprising, intimate insights into her quirky personality--has yet to be achieved. **1/2 from ****
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morrison-dylan-fan17 April 2016Whilst I have heard some of her hit singles and the tragic history of being part of the "27 club" I for someone have never got round to giving a good listen to Janis Joplin.Taking a look at reviews on IMDb's European Cinema board,I spotted a fellow IMDber praise a Joplin doc that they had seen on the BBC.Finding the movie on BBC iPlayer,I decided it was time to uncover the pearl.
The outline of the doc:
Growing up in a small town,Janis Joplin finds herself being an outcast in university, with her fellow students voting her "Ugliest Man on Campus." Feeling a strong connection to Blues music,Joplin decides to leave her small town for the free-wheeling spirit of California.As she puts all of her emotions into her music,Joplin finds herself struggling to get a grip on her own blues.
View on the doc:
Bringing Joplin's notes and lyrics off the page and onto the screen, the great musician Cat Power gives a soulful narration as Joplin,with Power's voice getting the deeply emotive words of Joplin smoothly across.Uncovering unseen performances,director Amy Berg keeps the narration in the background and allows Joplin to do the talking,by washing the screen in explosive footage from gigs which are placed in the era with Berg scattering hand-made posters and ripped concert tickets across the stage.Interviewing Joplin's band mates and family members,Berg strikes a fine balance in giving everyone an equal say,which allows for the lack of a dividing line between Joplin the person and Joplin the performer to be fully displayed,as Janis Joplin sings the Blues. -
TwittingOnTrender13 December 2019I'm not a huge fan of Janis' music, but I do love a music doc, especially from the late 60s and early 70s. This fit the bill nicely. A lot of it is previously seen and to be honest it doesn't add a lot to 1975's "Janis" - her friends and family aren't going to have remembered any new insights 40 years on, so it's the same stories, told by older people. I've always thought her singing is out-of-control screeching, but that had she lived she would have learned some restraint (and hopefully kicked the lifestyle habits that sometimes affected her performance) and used her (admittedly wonderful) voice to better effect - Maggie Bell springs to mind. However, the concert footage here did inspire me to download some of her stuff and give it a listen, so the movie must qualify as a success on those grounds.
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t-dooley-69-38691616 April 2016I will say up front that I am a fan of Janis Joplin and looked forward to seeing this (on the BBC) it details her life in chronological order from her days growing up in Port Arthur, Texas to her many incarnations with all of her bands including 'Big Brother and the Holding Company'.
There are interviews with friends, lovers and family. There is plenty of archive footage but only snippets of songs which includes the Monterey Pop appearance. Many songs are featured but the real reason here is to tell her story and her battles with drugs and alcohol and her of love of the blues, which she could sing so beautifully that even watching this I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
It is amazing how she managed to put so much emotion and passion into her music and it seems the people around it saw that in her too. Her firmament burnt for too short a time but while it did so it was also one of the brightest and most loved. I truly think this is a great tribute to Janis Joplin – not just the star but the person – highly recommended. -
kosmasp18 August 2021There was an album released a couple of months after she died? Well there goes the cliche of only rappers doing that ... all kidding aside, this is quite the in depth look into Janis and her struggle to make it into a world dominated by men. But also her hardships growing up. I reckon a few things made her harder and tougher to what was awaiting for her.
You get more than just a little piece of her heart ... and her songs. You get close and personal, from what she told other people, since she was not around to tell or say things from her perspective. But there are interviews and bits of things she said when she was alive that do paint a picture ... you take away fromn that whatever you want. -
JANIS JOPLIN: LITTLE GIRL BLUE follows a familiar narrative (also employed in 2015's AMY) of the exceptionally talented female star catapulted into the limelight, who could not handle it, and eventually killed herself accidentally of a heroin overdose at the age of 28.
All the familiar ingredients were there; the middle-class upbringing In Port Arthur, Texas, where Joplin became something of a rebel against her rather insular family, and expressed her rebellion by acting in increasingly mannish ways. Although she believed herself to be accepted into a largely male society, she found herself victim of a series of reversals, including being elected the "ugliest man" in a group of people in Austin, Texas.
Eventually she decamped to San Francisco, where she joined a band (Big Brother) and eventually acquired the recognition she had craved ever since childhood. The narrative followed a predictable live: in the end she became too big for her band, branched out on her own, enjoyed some major successes both in the United States as well as abroad, founded a new band, consolidated her stardom and was just about to embark on exciting new possibilities when death eventually struck her.
Accompanied by reminiscences from those closest to her, as well as members of her own family, JANIS JOPLIN: LITTLE GIRL BLUE told the story of a phenomenally talented person unable to reconcile personal with professional lives. She could not stand being alone when offstage; and tried to find solace in heroin. It seemed that for all their love of the singer (some of the interviewees started crying as they recalled the tragic sides of her life), no one actively lifted a finger to help her psychologically.
Accompanied by extensive footage of her in performance, together with readings from her private letters, Amy J. Berg's documentary had a certain fascination for anyone interested in her music. But for the uninitiated viewer it seemed to be wearyingly predictable. -
DansLeNoir8 April 2018It has not been a different life than the other 27's. It has not been a different life than other real stars. Filmin structure was not good. I guess they did it without much effort. He did not elaborate after Janis's death. No special music was made for the film. I did not like your director very much. The film has not succeeded in dramatic places as well. It was not nice without Janis. There was an air of sadness. Although a girl who was excluded in her childhood and adolescence was given a nice star, she had not been given any details when necessary.
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Lejink30 March 2016My favourite music has always been from the 60's and 70's but because she hardly dented the charts here I know comparatively little about Janis Joplin. I must say too that her music doesn't appeal very much to me either, her blues-wailing vocal-style affecting me rather like chalk on blackboard. And yet this was still a fascinating biography of her short life and watching it I couldn't help but think of another young woman who quickly got to the top but once there couldn't handle the pressures and died a lonely death in a haze of drink and drugs, also the subject of a recent documentary biography, I'm speaking of Amy Winehouse of course.
Coloured by archive footage of TV interviews, live performances and many candid home-movies of the time, her brief life span is covered from back to front as she lives out the classic rags-to-riches, success-to-excess route of so many in the music business before she checked into the infamous "27" club, also peopled by Brian Jones Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and indeed Amy Winehouse among many others.
What emerges here is a woman who only ever seemed at home either cutting records or performing live. Away from the stage and studio, however she was insecure about her looks, sensitive of small-town criticism from where she grew up in the American South and always looking out for the dream man who would help her settle down and beat her spiralling drink and drugs habits.
By the end of this engrossing film, I still didn't like her music but certainly better knew, understood and yes, liked the woman behind the music. -
SnoopyStyle15 January 2017Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas growing up with a conventional and accommodating family. Her high school years grew more bohemian during the civil rights era. Her looks were never conventional and she was ridiculed for it. She escaped to San Francisco. She got strung out on meth and returned home to recover. Her fiancé Peter abandoned her after getting another woman pregnant. She returned to San Francisco joining an old friend's managed band Big Brother and the Holding Company. She became a breakout star at the Monterey Pop Festival.
Her voice is always the star. There is obvious cooperation from family and friends. It doesn't mean that this doc shy away from her darker sides. Her addictions may be glossed over during the early days but her femininity issue is never that far from the surface. It covers her musical journey very well and gets enlightening glimpses into her private life. I would love more performances but this is not a concert film. Her performances are also used to highlight her struggles. This covers all the major points including the ups and downs of her career as well as her spiraling addictions. This is great for any passing fans. -
This touching, intimate documentary chronicles the life of legendary singer Janis Joplin, from her childhood in Port Arthur to her untimely death, as told by her surviving family members, friends, lovers, associates, peers, and by Joplin herself, through personal letters and notes.
When Don McLean talks of the "girl who sang the blues" in his seminal song American Pie, it is Janis he references. We see that smile of hers, so full of life, passion and joy. We also see the many faces of her sadness, that bewitching, heartbreaking pain that fed her powerful, inimitable voice.
This documentary takes us beyond the music, although Janis was pure music. It is the medium that drove her to like-minded spirits, to someplace she could truly feel herself at home. It led her to recognition, adulation, success. She never seems as alive as when she is on stage.
We see how she got there, her ups and downs, the loneliness, self-doubts, the need for an acceptance that may have never really come, especially from herself. Along with the music, the alcohol is also there, as are the drugs. A life lived on the edge, despair never fully going away.
I would have liked a little more time to go even more in-depth, peel the layers even more and get closer still to Janis, that little girl blue with the harrowing, unforgettable voice. It is still a wonderful, moving trip to a time, a woman, a soul who remains, in many ways, untouchable.
(+) A wonderful retrospective that will tell you who was Janis Joplin, converting newcomers and thrilling long-time fans.
(-) More time could have been spent engrossing the story, showing more of the different sides of this haunted, incredible singer. -
Dr_Coulardeau13 February 2016Nostalgia has no limit, no limits, absolutely none. It is in fact the frontier to dreams and the future, no matter how you look at it. With no nostalgia there is no imagination – nothing new under the sun except new assembly of old, eternal, ever present emotions.
And emotional you have to be and get with this invocation of Janis Joplin.
It was the dense and tumultuous time of "Fritz the Cat" (1972) and "Zabriskie Point" (1970). Three great artists and performers among the most innovative minds of their time, Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), Janis Joplin (1943-1970) and Otis Redding (1941-1967) died, two of an overdose and one in a plane crash. What a loss.
The only woman in that triad, who was not the first woman in rock-and- roll in spite of what is said in the film, was the direct white heiress of blues, jazz and black music, all represented by Aretha Franklin (1942-and still living and kicking, and even making Obama wax sentimental in public) who was a black woman in this field before Janis Joplin. The film does mention her and the fact she was the model, the inspirational muse of Janis Joplin, which made Janis Joplin second in this music, even if she was the first white woman.
What did Janis Joplin contribute to the world of modern amplified polyrhythmic music? A lot, indeed a lot, even more than just a plain lot.
She had very hard, realistic and powerful lyrics that exposed society the way it was felt and suffered by young people in the 1960s and early 1970s. She had a singing style and voice that were unique at the time among women and first of all white women singers. She was possessed in her music by hope for sure, but with the conscious certainty that this hope would be betrayed, and it was of course, naturally and without any failure. We can always count on one thing from this rotten world we live in: it will betray our hope, our hopes and even our plain submissive obedient and subservient wishes. And betrayal is the major master word of this hell of a life we have to live through. In spite of the flashes of bliss from time to time when an emotion is responded to emotionally, when our love is received and shared with pure love and not short term greed or lust.
It was betrayed by the use of drugs that made the hopeful forget the world cannot change in the proper direction, in the direction of human freedom, if you exit it by artificial means into virtual dreams of psychedelic freedom that turned into nightmares, like in the film "More" (1969) or those I have already quoted. That means the world can only change in the proper direction if you remain conscious and united towards that objective that you in no way control but onto the outcome of which you can weigh and even be of some influence by making your collective parameter heavier in front of the millions of other parameters that dictate history. Janis Joplin could be one of those who mobilized millions of individuals into pushing history in the right direction, which did not mean left or right, but right and not wrong. In the countries where they twinned up right with left and not wrong, they were made the slaves of decisions taken by others and of cosmic phenomena beyond any human control.
Betrayed it was by the use of violence and here the film is silent about the Black Panthers and their being systematically killed by the dozens in Chicago or other places. And that's what one should only care about in that period: the systematic repression of any protest around and after 1968. No allusion to the assassination of Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy. No mention of the Vietnam War and the millions of people killed or maimed over there in the name of democracy and freedom for – and only for – the Americans and maybe here and there the West reduced to its anticommunism of Mathuselah's ancient times. And that was then "Good Morning Vietnam" (1987) that will take twenty years or so to come out of its Pandora's box of napalm and other green berets' adventures, capers, brutality and barbarity.
Betrayed by all sorts of crooked, more or less crooked, rather more than less crooked, politicians from A.B. Johnson to Richard Nixon, via Spiro Agnew; and Ronald Reagan was just in the near future. There the worst part is that this systematically warped democracy enables the majority of those who want tranquility and no disruption in their everyday life and comfort, be they favorable to change or not, to always have the last word. The last reform of importance was the 26th amendment lowering voting age from 21 to 18, ratified in 1971, though not the lowering of drinking age and a few other age limits of that type, like being able to enter the music "saloons" or music bars on Bourbon Street in New Orleans and many other places where the best music was performed. It did not change anything in the logic of the political system, hence the social dependence we all cling to. And Nixon was reelected in 1972 by all these young 18, 19 and 20 year old voters. The debate was raging about this lowering of voting age from what I remember when Janis Joplin was at the highest point of her stardom just when she "decided" to OD in a motel room, alone.
You can make a star out of a person but that person's solitude is even greater than before because stars are NOT dancing together. And what's more these stars are black stars and we all know what happens to black stars that could be starry star-like black holes.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU -
neonblade-223 December 2020If you liked Janis before, you'll love her after watching this. If you don't think she's the greatest singer in blues rock history, this might just convince you. Some amazing footage that I hadn't seen before. This really gets to the heart of who she was and what made her so very special. Made me weep, a lot.
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This is perhaps one of the most boring bio docs I have ever seen. Yes there's a smidgen of insight from family and friends. Yes there's some nice cips. Yes, Dick Cavett reveals he slept with her.
But man this is sow going and really really boring.
Surprising, considering how vibrant and strong a singer she was. -
I found this documentary on Netflix streaming. Janis Joplin and I are contemporaries, she grew up in a conservative home in Port Arthur, Texas. At that same time I often visited my aunt in Port Arthur. Janis and I could have run into each other as kids, but we probably didn't.
When you see some of the interviews with Janis you can only conclude that she was very smart and had a gift for analyzing things and presenting her ideas. Most very gifted artists, musicians, singers are very intelligent, it is part of the package. But Janis was a mediocre student in high school and was a misfit of sorts, a kind soul who couldn't or didn't want to conform. But all she ever wanted was to be accepted and loved.
Perhaps her lowest point was when she went to U of Texas and she was not only nominated for the prank contest "Ugliest Man on Campus" she was voted the winner. Shortly after she left Texas and ended up in San Francisco where she found people like her. She really had no idea at first that her singing was very special but she soon became famous and things were written like "The most important new voice since Aretha Franklin."
In truth I never cared for Janis Joplin's singing, too raspy and too much shouting. But there is no doubt she moved audiences and when she was in the mood had a very lovely and soft lyrical style. Her demise was a result of having absolutely no clue what to do with herself when not recording or performing. It was her life and it was just one more heroin fix in her room after a performance that cut her short in 1970 at the young age of 27.
This is a superb documentary, one of the very best I have ever watched. There is much footage of Janis herself, and close-ups during performances almost bring you into her intimate world. It also has input from her brother and sister, some old friends, and some old band mates.
The film is narrated by actress Cat Power who often reads from letters Janis ad written to others and it is almost like hearing Janis herself. -
Sasha_Lauren20 March 2023There is nothing that humanizes and equalizes a superpower superstar like Janis Joplin more than hearing the letters she wrote home to her parents as a teen and young woman. In these letters she asserts her independence, shares news of her life, good and bad, and apologizes for being her own rebellious, free, and ambitious self in San Francisco and beyond, a far way from her small hometown of Port Arthur, Texas, where she was bullied, squashed, and judged, including for her equal treatment of people across the racial divides of her day.
Through Janis' letters that begin, "Dear Family," as well as those to her fellows, friends, and lovers, the filmmaker offers the audience a moving portrait of Janis' personal and professional life. Her huge singing voice, which surprised her when was seventeen, is generously on display in concert footage showcasing the soulful, bluesy, psychedic rock and roll music Janis sang, purred, and belted out in her unique and monumental way. Having snippets of these letters read by musician Cat Power in such an authentic, heartfelt, and wistful way elicits quite an impact.
Janis' loving heart, indomitable spirit, passion for being on stage and having a conversation with the audience, and her vulnerabilities - the little girl aspect - are presented in a forthright way. I feel like I know her somehow by her choices, (brave to insecure), which make sense in the context of her life. Interviews with her sister and brother, Laura and Michael, members of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and more, add depth to this project as we follow her quest for stardom, rise to fame at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and a varied narrative of joy, success, boldness, hesitation, and worry, all in relation to being true to herself and growing as a musician, baby.
I enjoyed the cameos by Dick Cavett, whereas the snippets of musicians who didn't know her personally detracted a bit from the film for me, but they didn't away much from the main material that delivered a stunning profile of an extraordinary musical artist and cultural icon. Janis' life story, of course, is bittersweet, because she died so young from a heroin overdose at only twenty-seven years old. I came away from this movie thinking more about her life than her death. She lives on through her remarkable music and legacy.
I watched Janis: Little Girl Blue for free on YouTube. -
talisencrw28 July 2016This was solid and very enjoyable. My lady and I are huge classic rock and blues aficionados, and we tend to especially enjoy biopics of great musicians, so when I found out this was out, it was a natural accompaniment with a big bottle of Chilean red wine for a date night indoors. Greatly talented yet ill-starred musicians that are quickly catapulted to superstardom only to die in hideous and tragic circumstances are particularly fascinating--and Janis Joplin certainly fits the bill.
I'm not sure I've seen any other of Amy Berg's works, but this was very well thought out and made. I haven't seen any other films about Janis, but in seeing this I can't see how any other could be any more definitive.
Now to see the recent ones on Chet Baker, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix...