The Michigan Daily-Saturday, April 8, 1978-Page 5

At Hill,

a great

singer in her Ella

-ment

By JEFFREY SELBST
W hat can you say about Ella?
Words seem inadequate. What
phraes can you turn to describe that
rich, mellow, powerful, golden,
sometimes blaring, sometimes wonder-
fully subtle voice?
Ella Fitzgerald swamped Ann Arbor
Thursday night, as 6,000 adoring fans
packed a straining Hill Auditorium. the
crowd was anything but restrained in
their affections. The moment she
walked on stage everyone stood up. And
she hadn't opened her mouth yet-
-Ovations on-the-hoof were the order
of the night, as Ella sent her marvellous
voice through a number of songs old
and new, sometimes performing note-
for-note renditions of her most famous
arrangements, sometimes improvising
anew.
SHE DID her standards, including
"How High the Moon," and, during the
encore, "Lady, Be Good." These two
songs are probably the finest examples
of Ella's scat-singing in existence. Ella
herself during the course of the evening
made a joke about how she'd forgotten
the lyrics at one part or another of a
song; the audience chuckled ap-
preciatively, for it is a verifiable fact
that Ella Fitzgerald can do more with a
nonsense syllable than any singer
anywhere, ever.
Why am I babbling in superlatives?
For once, I feel almost speechless.
She performed, among, other num-
bers, the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me
Love," Cole Porter's "Dream Dan-
cing," and others.
I got a chance to see Ella Fitzgerald
backstage after the concert. Ella has
lived a'rather long and full life, and the
strain of performing year after year, in
front of increasingly large and frantic
audiences have clearly taken their toll.
SHE WAS pretty clearlyon her way
out the door when a small group of
reporters was admitted to her
backstage sanctuary after the show, so
our -interview was brief. She talked of
her beginnings as a dancer. "I was too
scared to dance," she said, "so I sang."
And the rest was history. An agent for
Chick Webb's band was in the audience
that night and heard her-he dragged
her to Webb's dressing room one night
and forced him to listen to her. It star-
ted her skyrocketing career, beginning
with the famous "A-Tisket, A-Tasket,"
and culminating the association when
Ella herself took over the reins of
Webb's orchestra for one year, in 1940.
After that, she struck out on her own as
a solo act and has remained so ever sin-
ce.
Ella's tour continues from here to
Toronto and Cleveland and points east.
"She plans to wrife a book-which in fact
has already been begun, she says.

Daily Photo by ALAN BILINSKY

When asked whether it would be
autiography, she said somewhat shar-
ply, "Well, what else would it be?"
SHE GAZED at her interviewers with
puffy eyes, opened a mere slit, and
seemed to be trying hard to focus on her
guests. She spoke briefly of the heat she
endured on stage. "The sweat kept get-
ting in my eyes, and then they started to
burn," she said, with a hint of her
musical laugh.
Ella was hustled out by her manager,
a hovering protective creature who
was, even during the interview, helping

her into her coat. He had, throughout
the evening, helped her on and off
stage, dealt with hordes of reporters,
and generally acted as a sort of fac-
totum.
But the aura remained. Ella Fit-
zgerald is a wonderful lady and a hell of
a singer. This concert was, in fact, a
once-in-a-lifetime chance to see one of
the greatest vocalists of our day in-if
you'll excuse.the expression-her Ella-
ment,
jE~tfor t'
-of~t
fPUb c'nrmhaton
p. , .-mt Eica' a c e n O C 2003

Daily Photo by ALAN BILINSKY
THE SEAGULL
by ANTON CHEKHOV
PRESENTED BY
THE RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE PLAYERS
APRIL' 6, 7,8 8 PM
EAST QUAD AUDITORIUM
ADMISSION $2.50
Tickets Available
Michigan Union Box Office 763-2071

U




i?~ D


.....t

INGMAR BERGMAN'S 1u76
FACE TO FACE
In the tradition of Scenes From A Marriage but dealing more with career,
rather than family relationships (if they can be psychologically divided).
this film was made prior to Bergman's exile from Sweden. Liv Ullman shakes'
the audience up with her performance as a psychiatrist who must deal with
her own fears and fantasies. Aso starring GUNNAR BIORNSTRAND and
EARLAND JOSEFSON. In color and Swedish.

Daily Photo by ALAN BILINSKY
ELLA FITZGERALD did her stuff at Hill Thursday night like nobody else can.
Pictured, above, is trumpet player Roy Eldrige; below, Ella.

i


J,-/~jqrL rc L erit f cAJOA 1k

Wave popularity

Sun: THE RULES OF THE GAME

. AUD.
$1.50

By KATHE GEIST
G ERMAN NEW WAVE director
Wim Wenders spoke to a packed
auditorium in Angell Hall Thursday
night, following the showing of his
three-hour film, Kings of the Road. The
evening ended the three-week long Wim
Wenders Festival, which included
screenings of two of his earlier films,
Alice in the Cities and False Movemen-
ts. These films, together with Kings,
comprise a loose trilogy.
Asked to name his favorite films,
Wenders mentioned the once-banned
film on Mexican migrant workers, Salt
of the Earth, as his favorite American
film, Werner Herzog's Stroszek, a road
film similar in format to his own, and
Paul Schraeder's recently released
Blue Collar as his favorite new film.
Wenders said his own films are not ex-
plicitly political (in the sense of
Godard's late films), but that they
reflect the disillusionment, disappoin-
tment, and exhaustion that young Ger-
mans of his generation were feeling in
the 70s, in the aftetmath of hopes
engendered by the political uprisings of
the 60's.
HE DESCRIBED his generation as
growing up with an "indescribable lack
of something," a lack subsequently
filled by American movies and pop
culture. He described the cultural
schizophrenia this created, saying that
only through making films has he been
able to heal the gap within himself. Af-
ter making two films, he began to feel
himself truly a European director, and
not an American imitator.
When asked to name his favorite rock
groups or stars, Wenders mentioned the
Kinks, The Animals, Them, Gene

J1L4LLG0 .1' v- Pvv

TONIGHT AT
CINEMA GUILD 7:0O&9:30

OLD ARCH.

Clark, and Van Morrison. Although
rock 'n roll tunes occur in most of his
films, Kings is the only film he has ac-
tually scored with pop music.
He described Kings, the story of a
movie projector repairman, Bruno
"King of the Road" Winter, who picks
up Robert "Kamikaze" Lander after
the latter has driven his car into the
Elbe in a half-hearted suicide attempt,
as a non-nostalgic journey into the past.
The film, he said, "is not bent back-
wards," meaning that although it looks
back at the past, it does not long
to recapture or preserve it.
LIKE HERZOG, he felt that it was
"hard to be German," to which the
audience warmly applauded.
He said that his films have never
been shown in East Germany, and that
while he would like to film there, a
year-long effort to obtain permission
had failed. Kings, which follows the two
travelling men along the East/West
German border, is as close as he has
come.
He noted later that his films were in-
creasingly well received in West Ger-
many and that the belief, still current
abroad, that Germans do not ap-
preciate their New Cinema is becoming
less and less true. Herzog's Aguirre, he
pointed out, is doing extrrrr:.y well in
Germany at present.
Asked about his feelings toward
America, he said that he liked coming
here very much, but that the first time
he hadn't been ready for it. After only
two days in Los Angeles, he came down
with a fever brought on, he claims, by
confusion. He returned to Germany
quickly, but has come back many times
since, most notably to shoot parts of two
movies. In the fall, he will begin work in
San Francisco filming a fictionalized

biography of Dashiell Hammett to be
produced by Francis Ford Coppola.
HE COMMENTED that the view of
America he had gained as a child
seeing American films had not turned
out to be the America he found. In the
films, he said, he had felt there was a
tremendous respect for everything:
people, animals, landscapes. In real life
he did not find it to be the case. He
quickly added the disclaimer, however,
that this was "a great generalization."
Judging by the large crowd that at-
tended the film and talk, Wenders has
captured the imagination of Ann Arbor.

Rich in nuance and visual style, his
films are lighter, more subtle, slower to
develop and less densely beautiful than
Herzog's. (Wenders himself noted that
the themes and styles of the various
New Cinema directors are so different
that they feel virtually no competition).
Like his speaking style, which is soft
and diffident with frequent pauses
while he considers the best way in
which to answer a question, his films
reflect a humility and deep con-
sideration of the best way in which to
present a scene or story. Like his an-
swers, the unfolding of his stories is
well worth waiting for.


MEDIATRICS
presents
CHINATOWN
A detective movie of the film-noir style, the mood of Chinatown is
pervasive, ominous and shadowy. Set in Southern California before WWII,
Chinatown reverberates with the subtle eroticism of a love affair between
JACK NICHOLSON as a detective and FAYE DUNAWAY, his client. (Polanski,
1974).
Saturday, April 8 7:00 & 9:15 Nat. Sci. Aud.
Admission $1.50

The University of Michigan
Gilbert and Sullivan Society
THE GONDOLIERS
April 12-15, 1978
Manflaleehkn Thantrm_ Michinnn Laue