Film-making (and all of its offshoots in film writing and film-whining-about over the internet) tends to attract a certain kind of person; they’re the kind of people who can afford to take the chance on film school. They tend to be from the suburbs, they tend to be male, and they tend to have grown up proving their masculinity in areas other than sports (there’s a reason that so many films on the IMDb top 250 are about crime). As a result, there are some blind spots when film history is considered by our generation, and one of those spots covers up film musicals. Though the notion of people breaking out into song and dance to express their thoughts has generally become fodder for satire (alternative theater festivals are filled with titles like Chlamydia: The Musical and Bosnia: The Musical), there was once a time when the industry devoted its best resources towards the genre, producing films that, while frequently pretty silly, were as intelligent and precise in their use of sound, color, light, and movement as anything that ever came out of Hollywood. A Star Is Born is one such film, and it is the rare musical that pushes in two directions at once: it donates considerable resources to its production numbers, but never smooths over the human cost of the fame that its characters hold so precious.
Norman Maine (James Mason) is a Hollywood star at the peak of his career, which can only mean one thing: he’s got a long way down before he reaches the bottom. When he gets drunk and stumbles out on stage in the middle of a benefit at Los Angeles’s Shrine Auditorium, it would appear to studio head Oliver Niles (Charles Bickford) that his career is over. Fortunately for both, the swift thinking of Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland), a contract singer for the studio makes it appear as if the whole thing was intentional, and everybody walks off stage to great applause. It doesn’t take too long for Maine to realize the tremendous debt that he owes to Blodgett, and he starts using the remaining pull that he has with the studio to get her career on the fast track. But as they get closer, and she starts to proverbially ‘make it’ in the industry, Maine just slips further and further into alcoholism, and becomes more and more of a liability to the studio. One star is born, and another one fades.
A Star Is Born is not a traditional musical in that all of its numbers are contained within the story: they’re always performances, rather than spontaneous outbursts of music. Aside from that, it’s fairly typical of Hollywood epics of the time. It’s lavishly produced, it’s never less than spotlessly acted, and it’s all perfectly timed with the precision of an OK Go video. Because of that precision, the film can be a little hard to approach from an emotional level, with Maine’s downfall never less than compelling, but somewhat lacking in the heat that the easily comparable Sunset Boulevard had in spades. But within that framework, Star arranges its emotional beats with the same sort of percussive rhythm as a Broadway musical, with the more intense personal moments placed in tempo with the more elaborate production numbers, the most impressive of which is the ‘Born In A Trunk’ medley that closes the first act of the film (split into two parts with an intermission). The fifteen-minute long sequence is just as energetic and colorful as those in the prior Singing in the Rain and An American in Paris, but considerably more disciplined than either, and perhaps more soulful, as it tracks the rise of the film’s ingénue from obscurity to success. Much of this can be credited to Judy Garland, who is, in retrospect, one of the most unlikely people to ever make it to iconic status. Though immensely talented, she could hardly be considered a sex symbol, and never projects, in this or any other film that I’ve seen her in, the measured poise to be expected of movie stars. She lends the scene, and the film itself, what could only generously be called naturalism, but could rather easily be called feeling. Considering the immense size of the project (there ain’t no CGI backdrops here), that’s certainly no mean feat.
DVD Bonus Features
The film featured here is not the theatrical release, but rather a reconstructed version that was put together a few years ago. Hence, the picture and sound have been cleaned up immensely, but a few still images are inserted where once there were lost scenes. They’re not too distracting, but they don’t add a lot either. There’s also a whole other disc full of special features, which make it clear that Warner Brothers still knows exactly what the appeal of the film still is to many people: grandiosity. There’s ample footage of the premiere (some of it newsreel, more shot in Cinemascope), as well as different camera tests that they did to test out still-new camera technology. And of course there are the usual outtakes and alternate takes, with no less than five alternate versions of “The Man Who Got Away,” some of which are only in audio versions. There’s also theatrical trailers for all three versions of the film, a vintage clip featuring studio head Jack L. Warner, and the Looney Tunes short "A Star is Bored".
"A Star is Born" is on sale June 22, 2010 and is not rated. Musical. Directed by George Cukor. Written by Moss Hart. Starring Charles Bickford, Jack Carson, James Mason, Judy Garland.
