DVD of the Week
#12 – A Star Is Born (George Cukor, 1954)This semi-musical remake of the
1937 William Wellman flick casts James Mason as an actor on the slide, giving Judy Garland a foothold in the business as his own life slips into the gutter.
It's a gutting, brilliant blend of cynicism and show-must-go-on sentiment that's both appalled and entranced by Hollywood and the starmakers, sycophants and hypocrites populating the film industry.
The movie scores big in its performances, with two superb actors giving career-best turns, but its most unexpected pleasure lies in the wonderful interplay between the leads, which seems less like chemistry than alchemy. When they're bantering they're irresistible, and when they're falling apart, it's virtually unwatchable.
The film is also lit by a slew of brilliant numbers.
Top of the pile are 'Born in a Trunk' – added at the 11th hour – an extended, diverse production number in the 'American in Paris Ballet'/'Broadway Melody' vein, 'Lose That Long Face', a knockabout ode to looking on the bright side, and 'The Man That Got Away', perhaps the best song ever put on screen.
The only thing better than what Garland is doing with her body – apparently trying to rid herself of the song via impassioned posturing – is what she's doing with her voice. It had lost the flawlessness of youth, but gained an extraordinary power, as well as a quality and expressiveness akin to Billie Holiday's. Every facet of it is evident in the haunting vocal, which appears when the film is at its most carefree, but foreshadows the film's central tragedy.
The film's invention and heart-stopping evocation of the purest human emotion is perhaps best illustrated by a moment in the 'Born in the Trunk' number. Recounting her singing debut, Garland's vaudevillian (she's playing a character in a number from a film-within-a-film!) goes into corniness overdrive, recalling her dad encouraging her from the wings: "Papa shouted: 'This is it kid, sing…'" Silence, then Garland – dressed in pale blue – starts that old standard with a tranquillity and simplicity that sends a shiver down the spine. "I'll get by," she croons, "As long as I have you…"
A Star Is Born is a one-of-a-kind film: love story, fairytale and Hollywood tragedy, with the upsetting subject matter offset by the magnificence of the treatment.
DVD of the Week archive:
#1 - Let's Get Lost (Bruce Weber, 1988)
#2 - Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973)
#3 - The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)
#4 - The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935)
#5 - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
#6 - Written and Directed by Preston Sturges (Preston Sturges, 1940-44)
#7 – The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)#8 - Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)#9 - Cache (Michael Haneke, 2005)#10 - No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorsese, 2005)#11 - Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
