A Star Is Born (1954/Warner Bros. DVD)
Picture: B-
Sound: C+ Extras: B+ Film: B+
Give or take George Cukor’s What Price Hollywood?
(1932), There are three versions of A
Star Is Born and they are all good, but the 1954 version with Judy Garland
and James Mason tends to be the one that has the most nuance and depth, one
that sticks with most people and the one to really beat when the next remake
ever gets made. Concerning Garland, the echoes and
similarities between the fictional tale and real life have one of those rare
parallels that happen once in a generation and in a comeback work yet, like
Tina Turner’s album Private Dancer:
the performer gives it her all and comes up with a critical and commercial
success that remains a landmark work.
Garland is Esther, an up and coming
performer trying to make a name for herself, running into all kinds of subtle
indignities as she works to be a success when she meets the very successful
Norman Maine (James Mason) who becomes interested in her unexpectedly. A man whose career is starting to go into
decline, he is also going into personal decline through his increasing problems
with alcoholism and it brings out his darker side. At first, maybe he will wise up and it turns
out she has more talent than even he expected, but then she starts to become a
success when he starts to falter.
The great stage writer Moss Hart adapted and expanded the
screenplay of the 1937 film while music by Ray Heindorf, Ira Gershwin and even
Harold Arlen transform this into what pretty much remains the greatest
backstage musical ever made. Garland gives the
greatest performance of her career, Mason is top rate, Cukor delivers one of
the best directing job among so many and it still has the edge of honesty all
these decades later. Jack Carson, Tommy
Noonan, Charles Bickford and Amanda Blake also star.
The anamorphically enhanced image should be 2.55 X 1, but
this seems closer to 2.35 X 1 and that is considering any possibility of
overscan in various monitors. The
difference may be minor, but some will be bothered and there is no telling if
the Blu-ray (which we did not get as of this posting) but the restoration work
of Ronald Haver (et al) has paid off as this often looks good thanks to their
work so many years ago. Color can look
great and often does for this format, bringing the color as close to an
original three-strip, dye transfer print as possible (give to take lost footage
that was dilled in with zooming in on archive stills). The old CinemaScope system does have some
visual limits, but Director of Photography Sam Leavitt, A.S.C., was a
groundbreaking widescreen film and remains an innovative landmark to this day.
Cukor and Leavitt (The
Man With The Golden Arm, Exodus)
originally intended to make the film in the old 1.33 X 1 block style frame and
shot footage that way, but after the premiere of The Robe (whose premiere footage literally is used in this film
throughout), they decided to switch and the result is one of the first films to
prove that widescreen filmmaking was more than a gimmick, though it would be
seen as such for decades to come, despite so many classics shot that way. Robert Altman even visually referenced it in
his underrated The Long Goodbye and
seen today, its superiority is more obvious than ever in the face of thousands
of bad films in the scope frame, many increasingly shot in HD and in either
format (film or HD) by cameramen who have next to no idea about composition.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix comes from the restoration itself
was from a 4-track stereo master derived from a three-microphone stereo
recording system. This is lossy and the
music numbers and score sound much better than the dialogue and some sound
effects, but this is clean. We would
expect that the Blu-ray’s 1080p image and lossless audio mix would be better.
Extras include trailers for three versions of the film,
audio-only section with two outtakes from the film (film footage missing),
recording sessions, Judy Garland Promotional & vintage radio show version
of the story with Garland from the Lux Radio Theater in 1942, Hollywood
Premiere Telecast of the film from the Pantages, Newsreel premiere montage,
1954 Studio Exhibitor Reel, Expanded Post-Premiere Coconut Grove Party Footage,
deleted/alternate takes of one dramatic and four musical numbers which show you
the development of the film, Film Effects Reel, A Report by Jack L. Warner on
the film and A Star Is Bored Looney Tunes send-up with Bugs Bunny.
The film is also available for download at this link:
http://amzn.to/AOD_AStarIsBorn
- Nicholas Sheffo
