A Star Is Born (1954)

A Star Is Born is an American romantic film drama first released in 1954, directed by George Cukor.  The film stars Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford and Tommy Noonan.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Onetime matinee idol Norman Maine has lost both his public and the confidence of the studio bosses who employ him, and he hastens his decline by drowning his sorrows in alcohol.  One evening, he is intent on making a spectacle of himself at a charity gala event, but he is rescued by a young nightclub singer, Esther Blodgett.  When he hears her sing, Norman is convinced that she will make a great film star and persuades studio executive Oliver Niles to offer her a contract.  When the leading actress in a major production becomes indisposed, Esther, now known as Vicky Lester, replaces her, and she becomes an overnight sensation.  Esther’s happiness is crowned when Norman agrees to marry her.  But just as Esther’s film career takes off, Norman’s comes to an abrupt standstill when he is fired by his studio.  Unable to find work, the actor sinks deeper into depression and he soon concludes that his wife would be better off without him...

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make an A-list celebrity.  The film that delivered the most savage critique of Hollywood and the movie business in general also marked Judy Garland’s remarkable but all-to-brief comeback.  Since she was dismissed by MGM in 1950, Garland’s personal crises had worsened and had made her virtually unemployable.  Few believed that she would ever appear on the silver screen again.  The actress confounded audiences and the critics alike when she came back in a blaze of glory.  A Star Is Born was the absolute highpoint of Garland’s career, made all the more glorious by its sheer improbability.

George Cukor’s first colour film and his first musical, A Star Is Born is a remake of a 1937 film (of the same title), directed by William Wellman and starring Fredric March and Janet Gaynor, which was itself partly inspired by Cukor’s What Price Hollywood? (1932).  The film was again remade in 1976 by Frank Pierson, with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.  Needless to say, of these three films, Cukor’s is by far the best.

James Mason was an inspired casting choice to play opposite Garland.  (Originally the part had been offered to Cary Grant, but he refused, mainly because he did not wish to work with someone as notoriously unreliable as Judy Garland).  Here, the darkly introspective Mason is the portrait to Garland’s Dorian Gray.  In her Faustian pact with the Hollywood moguls, Garland gives up the very things that can bring happiness and stability to her life in order to fulfil her ambitions.  As she rises into the Heavens, her one true love falls into Hell; he is what she will become in the awful zero-sum game that is show business. 

Both of the leading characters in this film represent aspects of Judy Garland’s own life.   After a meteoric rise to fame in the late 1930s, the actress had difficulty coping with the pressures of stardom and her decline was almost as spectacular.  Low self-esteem coupled with some serious psychological disorders drove Garland to drink and drugs, a lethal combination that made her increasingly neurotic and unreliable.  Yet her talent was beyond dispute and, as this film shows, she was not only a great singer, but also a truly remarkable actress.  The authenticity that she brings to her performance in A Star Is Born is both mesmerising and heart-breaking.   For her role in this film, Garland was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, but lost out to Grace Kelly; Groucho Marx described this as the biggest robbery since Brink’s.

Despite garnering some very favourable reviews, the film fared poorly at the box office.  Concerned that the runtime would put off audiences, Warner Brothers authorised a series of ham-fisted cuts which shaved around forty minutes off the 192 minute runtime.  Although much of the cut material was lost, the film was partially restored in the early 1980s, with the insertion of unused alternate takes and photographic stills.  The film is now considered to be one of the finest of the Hollywood musicals, thanks to Garland’s show-stopping rendition of such hits as I’ll Get By, You Took Advantage of Me, My Melancholy Baby and Swanee.  Possibly the most poignant example of art imitating life that you can imagine.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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