Amy, Whitney, Judy: Why 'tragic divas' are irresistible to filmmakers

A new documentary about Whitney Houston is the latest example of the genre that feeds our morbid fascination with tales of talented women who go off the rails

Blinded by the limelight: Whitney Houston performing in 2009 (Getty)

They’re young, talented and beautiful. They make it to the top and then their lives veer violently off track as the drug-taking, alcoholism and general self-destructiveness take hold. They have grim family backgrounds. They’ve suffered abuse or bereavement at an early age. Welcome to what is fast becoming one of cinema’s favourite new genres – tales of the “tragic divas”.

Whether it’s Amy Winehouse or Judy Garland, filmmakers can’t resist these figures. And audiences share an intense and sometimes morbid fascination with them too.

The latest of the films, Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney, telling the heartbreaking story of Whitney Houston, is being given one of the widest releases in British cinemas of any documentary in history.

“So many people are fascinated by her,” Macdonald said of the troubled star during an interview at the Edinburgh Film Festival premiere of his film, which charts her life up to the moment she was found dead in a bathtub in a Beverly Hills Hotel in 2012, aged 48.

‘We want to celebrate Whitney and remember how amazing she was… people love her’ (Altitude Film) (Kenji Lloyd (Altitude Film))

“Why are they so fascinated? Is it something to do with her unknowability? People project conspiracies on to her, conspiracies around her death, conspiracies around her love life. Also, you have that very singular talent, very easy to recognise.”

The Oscar-winning director of One Day In September agrees that Whitney is “an archetypal tragic figure, whether male or female; somebody who has it all and is brought low because of whatever hubris or character flaws. Her story fits so perfectly into the way of understanding which obviously goes back to Aristotle. We are all drawn to these stories of the greatest and the best being brought low.

“One of the powerful things about the Whitney film and other films [about tragic divas] is that you see somebody who is so beautiful, so fresh, so young and who seems so innocent – and yet, within an hour and a half, you’re seeing the same person as a wreck. That fast-forward through somebody’s life is so powerful. We are all thinking about our mortality.”

Amy Winehouse had written extensively about her own life in her songs; the documentary set out to decode those lyrics

Whitney’s release is being handled in the UK by Altitude Film, the same company which distributed Asif Kapadia’s Amy, grossing a record-breaking £3.7m at the British box office in the process. The two films have many obvious similarities.

We know the ending before we go in, even if we suspend our disbelief as we watch the films and hope for a happy ending that will never come. And both Houston and Amy Winehouse went from being media darlings to becoming the subject of vicious tabloid headlines and comedians’ jokes as their lives unravelled.

But if there is darkness inherent in the subject matter, this isn’t a case of inviting audiences to rubberneck at the site of a deadly and spectacular crash.

“We want to celebrate Whitney and remember how amazing she was… people love her. They always have,” Hamish Moseley. Altitude’s head of distribution, says of the company’s plans for an upbeat marketing push. “Our campaign will be about reminding people how brilliant she was and how much they enjoyed the music.”

The enduring power of Houston’s music was underlined recently when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had their first dance to one of her songs at their wedding reception; she appeals to generation after generation.

Dramatised versions of tragic divas’ stories may also be popular with actors – after all, they offer their stars an opportunity to give grandstanding performances.

Marion Cotillard won Golden Globes and Oscars for playing French chanteuse Edith Piaf (dead at 47 from liver failure) in La Vie En Rose. Diana Ross was Oscar nominated when she starred as Billie Holliday (dead at 44) in Lady Sings The Blues. Renée Zellweger was justly praised (albeit in a very different context) for her ability to physically transform when she played Bridget Jones, and is likely to undergo a similar reinvention when she plays Judy Garland at the end of her life in the forthcoming biopic, Judy.

A first look at Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland (Pathe UK)

Lee Daniels is making a new Billie Holliday biopic, while various attempts have been made to tell the story of opera diva Maria Callas on screen. In documentaries, though, we get closer to the real figure.

Years after their deaths, a sense of mystery still surrounds all these singers. Amy Winehouse had written extensively about her own life in her songs. In his documentary about her, Kapadia set out to decode those lyrics. Houston didn’t write her own songs, but she expressed herself (as the director puts it) “solely through the sound of her voice”.

And Macdonald’s documentary works partly as a detective story. The “Rosebud” moment, which caused huge controversy when the film premiered in Cannes last month, is the discovery that Whitney was sexually abused as a child by her cousin, Dee Dee Warwick.

“It doesn’t explain everything but I do think it explains a lot,” Macdonald suggests of the abuse Houston endured as a child. “I only discovered that late on in the day, making the film. It made everything else stack up.”

A young Whitney Houston, as seen in ‘Whitney’ (Kenji Lloyd/Altitude Film Sales) (Altitude Film Sales)

Houston was also bullied at school for being “too white”. She sought solace in her family but that’s where she was let down. She was abused by a relative and discovered her mother was having an affair with the preacher at the church she saw as a second home.

“To me, that is equally important,” Macdonald suggests. “One of the consequences of childhood sexual abuse can be that you don’t then form a sure sense of your own self. Combine that with somebody who is made to feel you’re not really black, you’re not really part of the community…”

Macdonald talks of Houston’s “inability to form a real character”. She didn’t know who she was. Like Winehouse, she was “tortured and trapped” by what had gone on in her childhood. Late in her life, when she stopped being able to sing properly, she lost all means of catharsis and self-expression.

“She stopped having an outlet to express these emotions broiling inside her,” he suggests, and went from the “extreme of youth and beauty and success to a place that is so horrific”.


 Whitney with Bobby Brown: ‘In a relationship of such dysfunction, you can’t just blame one party’ 
 (Altitude Film)

Singer and producer Babyface told Macdonald that Houston should have developed into a great jazz singer. That’s precisely the same observation Tony Bennett made of Winehouse in Kapadia’s film. Instead, Houston’s career juddered to a halt.

“It’s almost as if she deliberately destroyed her beauty, her voice, all the things people liked about her. It was almost like she wanted the public to hate her towards the end,” Macdonald suggests.

These filmic tales about tragic divas have to have their villains. There will be leech-like boyfriends, opportunistic or philandering parents and mercenary record company execs and promoters hovering in the background.

Houston’s hard-drinking, hard-partying husband Bobby Brown has long been regarded by fans as one of the most negative influences on her, just as the errant boyfriend Blake Fielder-Civil is demonised in so many accounts of Amy Winehouse’s life. Macdonald, though, dismisses the idea that Brown destroyed her.

Houston was taking drugs very heavily “way before” she met Brown. The documentary has an unrevealing interview with Brown, who was “not exactly a very self-analytical person” and “has a great opinion of himself” – but the director defends him.

“I think he was a bad person to be around but in a relationship of such dysfunction, you can’t just blame one party. Whitney loved him, chose him and was determined through thick and thin to stay with him.”

Often, the movies about tragic divas expose wider prejudices about race, class and sexuality too. They become far bigger stories that just cautionary tales about their subjects’ short and troubled lives. This is certainly the case with Whitney.

The director realised just how central a figure Houston remains in black American culture when the film was screened recently in LA.

“So many black celebrities showed up I couldn’t believe it, from RuPaul to Donald Glover. Why is that? It’s because she means something to them which is very significant.”

His remarks hint at the richness and complexity of the “tragic diva” genre. These films take us to some very dark places, but they also remind us of the joy their subjects gave – and continue to give – to their fans and, now, to cinema audiences.

‘Whitney’ is released 6 July