The Bal­lad of Shirley Collins

You could be for­giv­en for not know­ing the music and sto­ry of Shirley Collins, the illus­tri­ous folk singer who made a remark­able come­back last year with her album, Lodestar. Dur­ing the 1960s and ​’70s, Collins – often play­ing with her sis­ter, Dol­ly – played a cru­cial part in the British folk revival, help­ing resus­ci­tate the ail­ing tra­di­tion along­side greater known acts such as Fair­port Con­ven­tion, Mar­tin Carthy and Pentangle.

Across her records, Collins dug deep into the folk archives, wed­ding her firm but gos­samer-light voice to stark­ly beau­ti­ful arrange­ments. But at the tail-end of the ​’70s Collins trag­i­cal­ly lost her voice, prompt­ing a with­draw­al from the pub­lic lime­light. She wouldn’t return to cen­tre stage until the release of the 2016’s ​‘Lodestar’, and now, with Tim Plester and Rob Curry’s gen­er­ous doc­u­men­tary, The Bal­lad of Shirley Collins.

Direc­tors, Plester and Cur­ry, have been here before with their 2010 film, Way of the Mor­ris, an intrigu­ing por­trait of the Adder­bury Mor­ris Men, bogged down by an over­bear­ing voiceover and super­flu­ous styl­is­tic choic­es. The Bal­lad of Shirley Collins doesn’t entire­ly elim­i­nate the pair’s ten­den­cy towards mod­est, filmic excess. Util­is­ing 16mm-shot recon­struc­tions for Collins’ ear­ly life, the post-pro­duc­tion effects attempt to con­jure the flick­er­ing imper­fec­tions of found footage but they are too clin­i­cal, too per­fect­ly poised to ful­ly con­vince. At worst, they dis­tract, as does the voiceover that per­tains to read diary extracts of a younger Collins.

Move past these con­trivances and a buoy­ant, affect­ing work presents itself. Tak­ing cues from the work of Collins her­self, shots linger on unas­sum­ing, quo­tid­i­an details – the rough brick­work of her house and the birth­day cards scat­tered amongst it. Aching shots of the Sus­sex coun­try­side appear with fre­quen­cy, its gen­tle, patch­work appear­ance mask­ing the decades of abuse its labour­ers were sub­ject­ed to.

Towards the film’s start, Collins explores the work­ing class roots of her fam­i­ly and the polit­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted she asso­ci­at­ed with dur­ing the ​’60s. Even at 80 her voice is as res­olute as that of a steely, fire­brand many years her younger. In a less defi­ant mood, Collins reflects on a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult event in her life with the sim­ple words, ​“I should have got angry but I didn’t – I got heartbroken.”

The film’s most effec­tive moments come when the cam­era does noth­ing more than qui­et­ly track the facial expres­sions of Collins, framed by her unfurl­ing curls and youth­ful freck­les. There is an uncer­tain­ty and ner­vous­ness to her demeanour as she begins the record­ing process of ​‘Lodestar’ but, by the end, a qui­et sense of achieve­ment. Collins reclines back in her sofa, eyes closed and with a gen­tle smile break­ing out.

The Bal­lad of Shirley Collins could eas­i­ly have slipped into a snoozy affair, the kind of docu-por­trait that’s curi­ous enough but lead­en and lack­ing in sparkle. Yet with its focus firm­ly on Collins’ joy­ful redis­cov­ery of her own voice, Cur­ry and Plester have craft­ed a space for the singer’s star qual­i­ty to shine. Exud­ing a keen sym­pa­thy for local tra­di­tion and place, it is some­thing to be cherished.