Written by Lavinia Hart, Lakewood.
In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a newly released film streaming on NETFLIX, we meet the infamous chanteuse of the Blues of the 1920’s, Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and the take members of her band. Perhaps the most transformative actress in her field, Davis’s Ma Rainey explodes on the screen with a breath-taking range of emotion and nuanced manipulation. By sheer force of stage presence and a vocabulary of devilish indignation, Ms. Davis defies even the boldest of her enemies, including an extraordinarily talented young trumpeter who wants to change the sound of his people’s music to embrace orchestrated swing and jazz. We see what it costs her to launch her authoritative onslaughts when she seeks out moments of silence. She needs these silent moments to regroup her warring spirit. Keen camera work captures the impact of each event by revealing the truth in what is unspoken.