Ohai. I wrote about a movie this week. But first...like what I've done with the place? Make sure to check out the Simply Streisand fanpage, the "Weekly Sanging" showcase, and, of course, the badass new logo.
Anywho....
A STAR IS BORN
In the cinema you'll find two types of legitimate tearjerkers (and by legitimate I mean those that don't feature the words "adapted from a novel by Nicholas Sparks" in the credits). One breed is the Realist Wrencher, where characters are placed in circumstances so harrowing and close-to-the-bone that we spill over with fear and gratitude all at once; I'm thinking The Deer Hunter,Schindler's List, etc. Then there's the Tinseltown Tragedy. You know what I'm talkin' 'bout-those old Hollywood lulus where the even the most miserable moment is orchestrated with such sprawling grandeur that you can't help but feel ecstatic, even as you blink back tears. Hearts are worn on multi-million dollar sleeves and bleed onto the screen in spectacular Technicolor. And in the realm of enrapturing, exquisite old Hollywood melodrama, A Star Is Born reigns paramount.
The picture is a remake of an already-cliched original, but the embarrassment of technical expertise and top-line talent brushes off all the old bromides and makes them shine anew. No warm-up for this puppy; we begin with one of the most opulent sequences in the decidedly ostentatious culture of old Hollywood. A gala for the stars. An army of flashbulbs, waving hands, craning heads. An auditorium that seats thousands, dressed to the nines. The wavy red curtains part. A massive orchestra rolls in on a giant setpiece. Everyone's ready for the much-touted appearance of renowned actor Norman Maine (James Mason)...except Maine himself, who's drunk as a skunk backstage. When he stumbles onstage clearly hammered in the middle of crooner Esther Blodgett's (Judy Garland) opening set, Blodgett integrates him into the act without missing a beat-ah, he's only playing drunk!-thus saving his reputation. Thus begins Maine's one-man mission to turn Blodgett into the next big thing. It's no surprise they fall in love along the way. Not so anticipated is that, while Esther begins her climb towards transcendent stardom, Norman's life begins to fall apart before his very eyes...
Oh, I'm sorry, were you looking for subtlety? Ingmar Bergman's got a whole shelf for you to check out. This one's all about the grand gesture. The charm of Old Hollywood cinema was its frankness, its what-you-see-is-what-you-get purity. Take that opening scene for example. In our age of cyber-cynicism, we'd probably get a couple jabs at the vanity of celeb life, punctuated with some half-hearted attempts at symbolism; in short, everyone involved would be very keen on exposing the rotting core beneath the glam-bang facade. But here, there is no "real point"; we begin at a premiere, instead of a cafe or a garden or just a regular nightclub perf, because it gives director George Cukor and co. the opportunity to stage a real jaw-dropper of a crowd scene. From the moment we follow that spotlight down into the midst of the crowd, we're gone. There isn't a moment in this picture not designed to stick firmly in the memory. The result is an exceedingly fervent feeling f incredulous rapture as we realize that for every trick pulled out of the bag, there're a dozen more of greater scope and sublimity.
Take Norman and Esther's meet-cute, for example. Backstage after her number, Esther's all in a tizzy. "Why is Norman Maine still in pictures?", she huffs. "You know, I ask myself that every morning." The camera pulls back. Norman is standing there, amused smile on his face. He palms her lipstick. Scrawls a heart on the backstage wall. Scribbles their initials inside. He asks her out. She turns him down, but offers a hint of hope in a gem of a line: "Maybe tomorrow night or the next night. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll lay out a whole supply of lipsticks, and we'll celebrate all over the place." A wry smile and then goodnight.
Today, you'd likely see a scene like this saved for the final act, plopped in before the credits roll to redeem middling material. Here, Cukor is so confident in the wonders to follow that he gives us this little miracle in the first ten minutes. And this in a three-hour picture! Cukor's confidence makes sense though; we don't know it, but he's aware that among the things in store are a glorious nightclub scene; an exciting excursion to the big city; a touching marriage proposal; a twenty minute jazz medley giving the inexhaustible Garland her due; and a heart-tugging ending to end all heart-tugging endings. Rare is a movie with a true trump card; even rarer is one with a full deck.
And then there's the score, which kicks in when the ever-present drama is at its peak, knocks the picture into exhilarating overdrive. In original studio musicals, too often the music serves as pleasant augmentation, nothing more; I love Easter Parade and Gigi as much as the next guy, but beyond the one or two signature numbers, the rest of their musical numbers serve as little more than B-grade balls for A-grade talent to knock out of the park. Here, every individual song is a winner. "Gotta Have Me Go With You." "The Man That Got Away." "It's A New World." "My Melancholy Baby." "You Took Advantage of Me." "Lose That Long Face." "Swanee." If these songs weren't already standards from radio play prior to the picture, they all are now. The music-and-lyrics team was one-of-a-kind-the dreamy decadence of Harold Arlen coupled with the winning wordplay of Ira Gershwin produced rapturous results, and if they songs smart on their own, they fairly smolder when Garland wraps them in the gilded glory of her euphoric tremolo.
Ah, so now we arrive at Garland, the reason this picture works. I say this at no discredit to Mason, who breaks your heart time again with his blithe yet brutal self-serration. But the fact of the matter is that it's our knowledge of Judy's prior career that made this film stick upon its release, and the particulars of her sad final years that allow it to age so peerlessly.
Let's leap ahead in time. 1976. A Star is Born is remade with none other than God herself, Barbra Joan Streisand, and Kris Kristofferson. This movie should've worked. The score's fairly strong, with multiple opportunities for that Streisand voice to really tear into it, the script is better than it was given credit for, and both the crowd scenes and the one-on-one dialogues are expertly photographed. Yet we can't really get into it all. The same goes for 1937 drama on which this one was based; Janet Gaynor does her damnedest, but it comes off as passable entertainment now, nothing more.
Let's think about this. Streisand had three hit albums, a Grammy, a Tony, and an Oscar all before age 25, and has spent the 40-odd years since releasing albums met with either critical acclaim or audience approval or both. Gaynor was the first winner of the Best Actress Oscar, carried a successful marriage, and had such a reputation for excellence across the board that she was often given the opportunity to pick her roles carte blanche. Now look at Garland. Around the time this picture was made, she was fresh off another in a series of suicide attempts. She was gaining weight rapidly. MGM had unceremoniously kicked her to the curb. Her mother was slandering her in the press. Everyone loved Judy, and wanted to see her beat the odds. They wanted to see her shine brighter than ever before. They wanted her-and, by extension, Esther Blodgett-to be happy. Moss Hart's screenplay cannily played on this national desire, drawing frequent parallels to Garland's stage roots, her famous vulnerability, her perfectionist persona. Esther's drive to succeed dovetailed with America's deep need to see their songbird soar again. Moreover, the madness and misery of the previous years had left Garland desperate for an outlet, one she clearly found in the character. Her Esther is nakedly ambitious, nervously witty, quietly hurting-one of the great 20th century screen creations, a startlingly incisive portrait that pokes holes in Gaynor and Streisand's vanity turns. How did she ever lose that Oscar?!
Today, Garland's unique presence aids the film in another way. As we all know, Garland's shining star was soon to be snuffed out-she overdosed on barbiturates at age 47. It was an ugly death, a tragic death, one that left a gaping hole in the fabric of our popular culture. It's a hole that still remains. Before she was an actress or singer, Judy was an Entertainer with a capital E-a woman with an electric presence who threw herself at us with such giddy force-of-will that we had no choice but to forget our troubles and join her for the ride. With Streisand, you're bowled over by every little detail of her exquisite interpretations; Garland made you forget the details altogether, went straight for the jugular.
We've never had an entertainer like her, and as such, the loss still stings. But this film is around to offer some salve. For three hours, Garland is up there, threatened by the very vices that plagued her in real life but strong enough to rise above them, enshrouded by darkness but blessed with that extra watt of ebullience needed to survive this hardscrabble world. We have, as pop culture consumers, an irrational need; something in us requires that little Dorothy Gale from Kansas never stop singing. Thanks to A Star is Born, she never will.
Proof that we're living in the last days; some idiot lost a good 10 minutes of ASIB footage, and, as such, a small chunk of the picture's middle section is composed of stills, voiceovers, and background music. It's more than a little frustrating that one of the great American studio releases is missing some integral pieces, but I make a plea for patience on your part. The other 160-ish minutes, I assure you, are quite quite good. In fact, they are among the very best.
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