Director Michael Ritchie's 1980 concert film—capturing Bette Midler coming off her hit 1979 film The Rose—finds the Divine Miss M in stellar form, leading with a big smile and considerable bosom (film tagline: “A National Treasure Chest”) at the Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, CA, where she regales an appreciative crowd with her jill-of-all-trades repertoire of songs, sketches, and jokes. While the band remains offstage, Midler is joined onstage by a trio of “Harlettes,” backup singers who she calls her Greek chorus (“these girls don't know shit about Euripedes, but they know plenty about Trojans.” Ba-dum-bump.). Although she warns that “eggs will be laid tonight,” the show itself is top-notch, with Midler riffing about a recent European tour (recalling Germany, she says “my little Jewish heart was leaping in my breast, shrieking ‘get me the fuck outta here'”), donning a mermaid costume to channel Delores DeLago (the toast of Chicago), telling a stream of raunchy jokes as Sophie Tucker, and even doing a (brief) impersonation of Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure. But the real draw here, of course, is the music, and Midler serves up a number of hits and covers, including “The Rose,” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “My Way,” “Leader of the Pack,” “The Fire Down Below,” “I Shall Be Released,” and “Do You Wanna Dance?” Long out-of-print but newly re-released as part of the manufactured-on-demand Warner Archive Collection, Divine Madness is presented here in Dolby Digital stereo (hopefully, this will someday be restored and remastered with high-definition sound). Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)
Divine Madness
(1980) 86 min. DVD: $17.99. Warner Archive Collection (avail. from most distributors). Volume 30, Issue 2
Divine Madness
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