Synopsis
The applause of the world... and then this!
A movie star helps a young singer/actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.
1954 Directed by George Cukor
A movie star helps a young singer/actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.
Judy Garland James Mason Jack Carson Charles Bickford Tommy Noonan Lucy Marlow Amanda Blake Irving Bacon Hazel Shermet James Brown John Alban Laurindo Almeida Leon Alton Rudolph Anders David Armstrong Phil Arnold Nadine Ashdown Gertrude Astor Jack Baker George Becwar Don Beddoe Rodney Bell Oscar Blank Lennie Bluett Lulu Mae Bohrman Willis Bouchey Marshall Bradford Ruth Brady Paul Brinegar Show All…
Народження зірки, Ein neuer Stern am Himmel, È nata una stella, Une étoile est née, Nasce Uma Estrela, Ha nacido una estrella, כוכב נולד, スタア誕生, Csillag születik, S-a născut o stea, En stjärna föds, 스타 탄생, Nasce uma Estrela, Bir Yıldız Doğuyor, Звезда родилась, Zvaigzne ir dzimusi, Narodziny gwiazdy, 一个明星的诞生, Роди се звезда, Nace una estrella, Зірка народилася, 星海浮沈錄, Ha nascut una estrella, En stjerne fødes
Hollywood spectacle/myth made wounded, intimate and mortal. The way Garland informs this with her own history of addiction and self-destruction is some of the most beautiful acting I've ever seen and completely heartbreaking. "The dreams you've dreamed have all gone astray."
Basically an upgrade of the 1937 movie in every way.
Also: I happened to watch the restored 3-hour version and it is insane that people thought it was a good idea to put in 8 minutes where THEY HAD NO FOOTAGE and just put still photos over the audio track. Those can be deleted scenes for the DVD! Those scenes are also totally irrelevant anyway and were cut out for a reason!
Rewatching this classic made me realize how many underlying themes of depression and what comes from fame there are here. It’s incredible. The length is 105% justified because this movie really has a lot to say. The analogies about Judy Garland and her personal life are brilliant and feel necessary. This is what you call not only a career-defining role but also an era-defining role. Judy Garland gave, what I believe to be, the best musical performance ever captured on film. Her emotional range, dramatic range, singing ability, passion, energy, talent, and wit pop through the screen every second she’s in this 181-minute movie. Her performance is so impressive in every sense, I was still completely blown away by it…
prefer this story with actors than singers in the remakes yet nothing here was as funny as bradley cooper pissing himself at the grammys
Cukor in many ways is the key Hollywood Director: emerging from Pre-Code to star studded comedies to some noir to Serious Dramas to what is arguably the climatic high of his career, this larger than life color musical that celebrates the system of Hollywood while lamenting its darker sides at the same time (no Hollywood picture is a Hollywood picture without a paradox at the center). Despite being an “epic,” this is a pretty simple picture: one star rises, the other falls, and while only three hours long (I watched the version with the Ken Burns-esque still photo montages) it feels like you’ve lived years with these people. Cukor’s staging is seemingly simple—less expressively dynamic than the black and white…
Stunningly ahead of its time from the opening sequence, which was ostensibly shot on location at a real Hollywood gala (or it feels like it was, anyway), to its ending, which is more heart-breakingly ambiguous than anything else being churned out by the studios at this time. Most Hollywood films about the movie industry have a thick layer of artifice caked on them, but not this, which never for a moment feels anything less than real - and it's all the more terrifying for it ("I don't want to see your face!").
Judy Garland's performance is dizzying at times - during the scene when she breaks down crying about her husband only to wipe off the tears and plunge headfirst…
Judy Garland plays a queer little twink boy with the voice of a Broadway star who marries her futch actor husband. It leads to inevitable tragedy.
Hollywood movies about Hollywood can be insufferable, but when they're made into musicals, somehow they usually work out. They capture the dreams of millions to become stars, to escape the drudgery of wage slavery, all while quietly saying, "look how hard we've got it." And to be fair, many of them are technically working class. Just, uh, very rich working class. They're still exploited; but they're paid well to tell the rest of us it's possible to be rich. If they weren't already liars for a living, it'd be even more offensive.
But it's…
“I somehow feel most alive when I’m singing.”
the way that I am in so much PAIN and cannot stop SOBBING and it’s all because of the MAN that got AWAAAAAAY!!!!!
I just witnessed one of the greatest performances my eyes have ever seen. God bless you Judy Garland.
[95]
Getting my small qualms out of the way first: [1] Saw the 176-minute “restored” version—not sure if this is considered the canonical print at this point, but it’s what I had—which contains several still photo add-ins in the first hour or so that admittedly are a little distracting and choppy, throwing a wrench into the spokes just a bit. Though I have trouble faulting the film itself for that, so this is more a superfluous nitpick than anything else. [2] Vicki’s exaggerated sobbing while talking to Niles behind the scenes is, like, the single moment that rings disingenuous—and it’s a pretty important scene—but only compared to how colossally honest everything else Garland does feels. The sputtered gasping goes a…
well that was....something. i actually didn’t cry at this one, but i did scream when norman maine said ‘i just wanted to take another look at you’.
100/100
[tweet from 2010]
Very proud of myself, I think I only cried six times this time. Simply the best Hollywood melodrama ever.