'Miracle' as Aretha Franklin's glory seen in concert documentary

Aretha Franklin in a scene from Amazing Grace. Photo / AP

In early 1972, Aretha Franklin recorded Amazing Grace, a collection of gospel classics performed over two nights at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. The session — which included gospel pioneer James Cleveland, his Southern California Community Choir and esteemed musicians Bernard Purdie, Cornell Dupree and Chuck Rainey — was captured live, in front of an adoring congregation that, by the second evening, would include Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Franklin's father, the Baptist minister C.L. Franklin.

Amazing Grace would become the best-selling gospel album of all time.

And Warner Bros, the corporate umbrella of Atlantic Records, Franklin's label, saw added potential: The company hired Sydney Pollack to direct a documentary about what anyone could tell would be the musical equivalent of lightning in a bottle.

Pollack commandeered a team of cameramen and sound recordists. But he neglected to provide "clappers", the wooden tools editors use to marry sound to image. For nearly 50 years, the Amazing Grace documentary resided only in film cans and the frustrated imaginations of people who could only dream what the footage would look and sound like today.

Thankfully, a former Atlantic producer named Alan Elliott never lost faith. Thanks to his tenacity, Amazing Grace can now be seen in all its aesthetic, spiritual and historical glory. And it is as simple and unaffected as Aretha Franklin herself is in the film: Unsullied by talking-head interviews, sentimental reminiscences and other interstitial distractions, Amazing Grace simply chronicles two incredible concerts, as Franklin, Cleveland, the choir and the congregants seek fellowship and find transport and transcendence.

Aretha Franklin in a scene from the film Amazing Grace. Photo / AP

Franklin stands at the pulpit or sits at the piano, often closing her eyes to sing standards such as Mary, Don't You Weep, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, the album's title track, and a stirring medley of You've Got a Friend and Precious Lord, Take My Hand.

Editor Jeff Buchanan recreates the performances with a focus on Franklin's formidable musicianship and concentration. She barely says a word in Amazing Grace; her father and Cleveland do most of the talking.

Secular music fans won't want to miss Amazing Grace, if only for one more chance to appreciate the genius of Franklin, who died last year. But Elliott and his team have retained the enterprise's initial spiritual purpose, not just sharing an invaluable record of a storied musical performance, but bearing witness to sacred vocation, commitment to faith and continuity of ancestral memory.

Amazing Grace is an act of cinematic resurrection if ever there was one. You might even call it a miracle.