Even though it won an Oscar for Best Original Story, A Star Is Born tells what was probably not a "new" story even when it first premiered. It's the tale of an up-and-coming actress who falls in love with a movie star whose career is on the decline. As the film progresses, we see her career take off while his flounders. So popular was the story that it's been remade three times already, first in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason (perhaps the definitive version) and then in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson (not quite so definitive but also not without its own charms) and again in 2018 with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper (a rather surprisingly faithful adaptation of the 1976 version). The fact that the original version is rather obviously based upon the movie What Price Hollywood? means that there are at least five attempts to tell what is essentially the same story.
This version stars two previous Oscar winners for acting Janet Gaynor, who had won the first Academy Award for Best Actress, plays the part of the naive farm girl Esther Blodgett who comes to Hollywood to make it big. Fredric March, who had received an Oscar for playing the dual role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and who would win another one a few years later for playing a drunk in The Lost Weekend, plays Norman Maine, the movie star who’s on his way down from his lofty perch as a beloved movie actor. They meet at a Hollywood party – where else? – and he starts helping her to find work in the movie business. She’s had a tough time breaking through, perhaps due either to her naivete or her unassailable faith in her ability to be a star. Whatever works. This might be one of the first films that could boast of having two Oscar winners as its lead, so the novelty must have been part of the draw.
We get the usual Hollywood movie moments here: the arrival at Union Station, the footprints at the Chinese Theatre, the cheap apartment, screen tests, makeovers, even the preview audiences. Perhaps these kinds of images and moments were still relatively fresh to a movie-hungry public, but now they’re the stuff of cliché. Even the Hollywood party where Esther and Norman meet is a bit of a tired sequence. She’s trying out accents, and all of the big shots are just bored and puzzled. No one at a Hollywood party in the movies ever really seems to enjoy any of the movies being mad. That’s probably not changed a great deal since 1937.
Esther, after having her name changed to Vicki Lester, becomes a star rather rapidly, it seems, and everyone in Hollywood seems to be immediately disenchanted with Norman even though Esther loves him enough to marry him and stand by him even after he shows up drunk to the Oscars and accidentally hits her in the face. That scene must have been designed as award bait, so unlike most ceremonies that the Academy has held. Norman realizes that his career is over, and it isn’t long before Esther recognizes how much her success has hurt him. Norman’s solution, which is repeated in every iteration of this story over the decades, is a tragic one, but it does allow for the female star, Gaynor in this case, to demonstrate her strength in the face of adversity. No wonder they keep remaking this film.
As usual, it's a supporting player who gets most of my attention. This time around it's Adolph Menjou. Much like Claude Raines at Warner Brothers, Menjou appeared in hundreds of films, and it's always a treat when he shows up. Here he plays the head of the studio that employs Esther and Norman. He gets to demonstrate his comic timing in the first half of the film and his compassion in the second half; it's quite a part, and he makes the most of it. Menjou was a talented actor who was given a wide range of roles throughout his career, and he always seemed to make the most of a part, no matter how small it was.
Andy Devine also appears in the film as an assistant director who's also pretty new to Hollywood. Devine would also appear in hundreds of movies, including many, many westerns, throughout his career, but those looks and that voice make you wonder if he was employed merely for the audience to have someone to ridicule. He never gets much to do here; I wondered why there wasn't a potential love story between him and Esther, just to give a bit more dramatic tension to the film. Perhaps he was too "comic" for an audience to take him seriously as a love interest.
As an aside, I must say that the print I watched was incredibly murky. I don't know if it was originally filmed to be so dark or if the print has deteriorated over the years, but there were times when I could barely make out who was on the screen. Perhaps it's meant to be somewhat metaphorical for the dark side of Hollywood, but I didn't detect a pattern to suggest it was a deliberate choice. Oddly enough, the film's cinematographer, W. Howard Greene, received an honorary Oscar for his color photography of this film. It was the second year in a row that he had received such an award.
There's also an intriguing framing device for this film. It begins and ends with the final shooting script for the movie itself. It opens to the page that describes the opening shot in order to start the action, and it closes with the description of Norma's speech: "Hello, everyone. This is Mrs. Norman Maine." I'm wondering if the director, William "Wild Bill" Wellman, wasn't trying to call attention to the artificiality of the entire film by using this method of bracketing the action. It makes us realize that it's all still a Hollywood movie after all, that most artificial of constructions.
I've seen all four versions of A Star Is Born now. I still prefer the 1954 one, and it probably has to do with Garland's performance more than the story itself. You get a greater sense of her awareness of both the good and bad aspects of fame, perhaps something she knew more about than Gaynor did. The 1937 film sets the parameters for each of the remakes, and as such, I admire how easily it can be adapted to fit the story of the rise of a musical film star (1954) and a rock-and-roll singer (1976 and 2018).
Oscar Win: Best Original Story
Honorary Oscar: W. Howard Greene for the film’s use of color cinematography
Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Director (William A. Wellman), Best Assistant Director (Eric Stacey), Best Actor (Fredric March), Best Actress (Janet Gaynor), and Best Screenplay
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