Cult Cinema: Mahogany (1975) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Motown Productions now known as de Passe Entertainment originally came together in 1968 following Berry Gordy’s foundation of the Motown record label in Detroit, Michigan and like the label itself it specialized in television programs dedicated to Black recording artists such as Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Temptations and The Jackson 5.  There was also even a Saturday morning cartoon by Rankin/Bass called The Jackson 5ive which ran between 1971 and 1973.  In that timeframe, Motown Productions started getting into feature film productions for theatrical release, starting with The Entity director Sidney J. Furie’s 1972 biographical drama Lady Sings the Blues a Billie Holiday biopic with Diana Ross in the leading role alongside her husband played by Billy Dee Williams. 
 
Intending to follow it up with another screen pairing of Ross and Williams, Motown Production’s next project became Mahogany a romantic drama involving a fashion student who becomes a popular designer and a triangular relationship between a local activist and a flamboyant fashion photographer looking for a new muse.  Originally intended for The Loved One and Tom Jones filmmaker Tony Richardson before being replaced with Berry Gordy and based on an original story by Toni Amber adapted for the screen by Inserts writer-director John Byrum that same year, Mahogany much like Motown Productions’ final film The Last Dragon is a star studded melodrama whose soundtrack virtually overshadows and perhaps outsells the film itself. 
 
Tracy Chambers (Diana Ross) is a young Chicago-based Black fashion student trying to break into the largely White dominated world of modeling and eventually her own fashion line.  Discouraged by her employer balking at her night classes amid many of her designs rejected by Chicago buyers, she crosses paths with local neighborhood activist Brian Walker (Billy Dee Williams) whom she eventually forges a relationship with despite his own ideological protestations against her career choices.  However following a chance encounter with Sean McAvoy (Anthony Perkins), a flamboyant (and perhaps neurotic) renowned fashion photographer, Tracy is invited to a fashion shoot in Rome. 
 
In her first real break with success, reinvented with the stage name Mahogany by Sean, Tracy becomes a fashion model sensation.  However, she’s still held back by the controlling and possessive Sean intent on making her his new muse including but not limited to shooting down efforts for her to show any of her new designs.  As Tracy reunites with Brian, now a budding politician running for office, Sean becomes increasingly erratic with jealousy and even turns violent, threatening to destroy everything Tracy worked for with palpable danger and a sense of peril for our heroine.  What started out as a slice-of-life regard for the day-to-day struggles of a fashion designer in training briefly turns into a bit of a psychodrama thriller as the pressures and vices of the industry threaten to swallow our heroine whole.

 
While not nearly as wild as the 1985 martial-arts musical revue mashup, in theory Mahogany uses a similar skeleton involving a Black hero/heroine navigating an increasingly dominant White man’s world.  A soulful character study and analogue to the screen duo’s Billie Holiday film, Mahogany is a bit like a Douglas Sirk melodrama featuring impassioned performances sometimes bordering on scenery chewing against striking urban vistas lensed exquisitely in scope 2.35:1 widescreen by The Devils cinematographer David Watkin.  Though relying a number of times on musical montage and still photos rendered by The Godfather Part I and II editor Peter Zinner indicating the passage of time set to Diana Ross singing the theme song Do You Know Where You’re Going To, Mahogany is a glittering kaleidoscopic snapshot of the mid-1970s fashion movement. 

 
Nowhere as grim or twisted as The Neon Demon or nebulously interpretive as Blow Up, two relatively dark regards for the fashion industry, Mahogany mostly finds its strengths in the leading performers.  Though featuring a sizable amount of supporting performers including Princess Irene Galitzine playing herself, it basically boils down to the romantic entanglements of a radiant and fiery Diana Ross and an equally strong yet much cooler and collected Billy Dee Williams.  At times Ross and Williams spar ferociously and you come away a bit scared of her while Williams demonstrates plainly why he’d later play Harvey Dent in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film.  Clashing with the demands of her sociopathic and controlling domineering yet flamboyantly bisexual employer played by Anthony Perkins in a kind of continuation of the Norman Bates character if he became a fashionista, the film gradually begins picking up steam and tension as a quasi-thriller when Perkins starts sliding further and further into madness and possession over the idea of his new muse finding love elsewhere.

 
While the film was met with mixed critical reception and meager box office returns, the soundtrack album to Mahogany was a hit peaking at number one on the Billboard singles chart in 1976.  Featuring a largely instrumental score by Michael Masser outside of out or two tracks, the theme song Do You Know Where You’re Going To garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song and in the years since has been recognized by the American Film Institute in 2004 as one of the nominees for 100 Years…100 Songs.  Motown Productions maintained a steady track record up until 1978 with The Wiz before culminating in The Last Dragon in 1985, effectively the last film in their slate, but prior to those films Mahogany achieved the most commercial notoriety up to that time.  

Still an engrossing melodrama unafraid to place its heroine in a difficult if not frightening situation before becoming a bit of a date movie, Mahogany was only Diana Ross’ second feature onscreen and though she’d take center stage once again as the heroine of The Wiz.  Within two features Ross demonstrated she had the chops for acting in addition to being a powerful pop singer and performer.  Mahogany didn’t garner the same amount of accolades or attention as her previous picture Lady Sings the Blues but she’s unforgettable in this picturesque, lovely, sometimes scary look at what it means to find and hold your own in a competitive cutthroat industry.

--Andrew Kotwicki