Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9430 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-09-19
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 154 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
"This is Mrs. Norman Maine": Could these be the most heartbreaking words Judy Garland ever uttered? George Cukor directed and Moss Hart wrote this film, a musical remake of the 1937 original. The story is a show-biz classic: He (James Mason) is a major movie star who is past his prime and on the way down; she (Garland) is an aspiring singer who, with his help, becomes a bigger star than he was. Their marriage becomes a seesaw of success and failure, as he slowly drinks himself to death out of bitterness at the fickleness of fame, until his bad behavior begins to threaten the career of his long-suffering and loving wife. Mason and Garland are both terrific, with her singing "The Man That Got Away" among others. Remade in a 1976 Barbra Streisand vanity production. --Marshall Fine

Review
The 1954 A Star is Born had better music than the 1937 original, but that's about all that viewers may agree on in assessing one version against the other. On the downside, the music added about an hour to the running time. The film was re-cut and shortened by studio executives after release. Despite the efforts of restoration experts, there are today no complete prints of the original release version. Judy Garland benefits from the increased emphasis on her character, and the film is far more of a star vehicle for her than was the original for Janet Gaynor. To make room for the songs, several supporting characters from the 1937 version were eliminated. The result is a film that, despite the increased length, has less story-telling richness, though the deficiency is compensated by Garland's superb performance. The film was not among the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, though it did receive six other nominations, including for Garland, James Mason, and "The Man That Got Away" as Best Song. ~ Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide

On the DVD
Documentary network telecast of Hollywood premiere and newsreel coverage of post-premiere party
3 alternate filmings of "The Man That Got Away"
Deleted song "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street"
Soundtrack remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1
Theatrical trailers fo the 1937, 1954, and 1976 film versions
Interactive menus
Production notes
Scene access
Subtitles: English and Fran�ais

Customer Reviews

I Couldn't Be More Pleased
The film A STAR IS BORN, the 1954 Judy Garland musical for Warner Bros., has been through nearly as many trials and tribulations as any real-life movie-star wannabe to maintain its reputation and realism. The director--George Cukor's--love/hate letter to the joys and sorrows of Hollywood stardom came in just over three hours long--181 minutes. In an ironic affirmation of the film's recognition that "the lush days are over" for Hollywood, the studio cut the actual release print down to 154 minutes so that theater owners could squeeze in one extra screening per evening. That is the only version we had between 1954 and 1983, and any revivals, cinematheque offerings or TV broadcasts--quite enough to sustain the cult of the movie and Judy Garland's bravura performance as a Hollywood star married to an alcoholic has-been--sprang from that truncated release.

In 1983, a partially restored, 170-minute-long version of A STAR IS BORN hit first-run movie screens after long and loving archival and editorial struggle. It was a matter of using anything available to make up for the scenes Warner Bros. had hacked out--stills, amateur home movies made from the set, audio tracks--anything. Most significantly, the restoration reinstituted the entire portion of the movie which appear in the DVD as all of Chapters 14, 15 and 16 in which Garland's character takes a long-shot chance at an acting career; but although that enhanced plot-line was reintegrated into the movie, the static and museum-like restoration was in many ways more admirable than lovable. Still, it gets across the idea that Judy Garland's character--singer Esther Blodgett--faced her own trials and tribulations on the way to becoming "Vicki Lester" the film star.

The current 1999 DVD goes the 1983 theatrical release two better: it incorporates even more material previously thought lost--in particular audio--and the newer computer technology was used for a thorough digital "scrub" of the already handsome restoration. Previous reviewers are right: the restored sequences can still be a bit off-putting, but the DVD now for sale at 176 minutes is a noticeable improvement over the 1983 release and probably the closest we'll ever get to Cukor's original masterpiece. Is the color perfect? No, 1954 Technicolor was still garish and candy-colored; interestingly, the scenes filmed outdoors at night come across as more realistic than some of the interiors, and the character's facial tones look more realistic. Is the sound perfect? It's a good 5.1 multitrack engineering that sounded good on my budget-level home theater, and it certainly holds better aural technology than was available in 1950s movie houses.

A STAR IS BORN is very much a movie about movies, a "backstage" musical something like CABARET where the singing and dancing occur as staged performances or otherwise make sense as something the screen characters would naturally do. (As opposed to the more impressionistic, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN type of movie where characters break character and burst into song artificially.) Judy belts Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin's unforgettable "The Man That Got Away" in an after-hours club, an impromptu performance later described by eavesdropping leading man Norman Maine (James Mason) as "singing just for yourself and 'the boys in the band.'" (And with those last five words, a play was born.)

The performance-within-a-performance element that any backstage music requires come from two indelible production numbers from Vicki Lester's films. "Born in a Trunk" is by far the better known but the restoration added the endearing "Lose That Long Face," in which another unsinkable Vicki character sings a message of undying optimism as she tap-dances and flat-foots through studio-set rainy streets (Hmm, wonder where they got that idea?)

But most of Garland's performances are in more intimate venues. After rising starlet Vicki Lester becomes Mrs. Norman Maine, her husband puts her to use as "my own little jukebox" as she sings hit songs from her movies. In a particularly charming sequence, Garland's character plays homage to--and gently spoofs--the Fifties penchant for grandiose fantasy production numbers by acting out the round-the-world extravaganza ("Somewhere There's) A Someone At Last" to a background record, using what's available in the living room to mimic props and delighting the sophisticated Mason. The message is clear: it's the star, not the production values, that matter most.

Indeed, Judy Garland IS the star who makes this movie; her fictional Vicki Lester comes alive when fused with elements of Garland's own poignant and turbulent life as an all-too-visible film personality. In this movie her performances--as actor and song stylist--were never better; volumes of praise have been written to which I happily agree. But those who surround "Vicki Lester" are a key component of the film's success, too: James Mason's "Norman Maine" confronts his wife's tendency to overdramatize with a subtle performance as the self-deprecating, self-loathing alcoholic who increasingly becomes the object of his wife's charity. Jack Carson the perennial WB "heavy" of the postwar years (recall him from "Mildred Pierce" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof") is in full force as Matt Libby, the gladhanding and cynical studio publicist. Charles Bickford, perhaps best remembered today as father to Lee Remick's character in "The Days of Wine and Roses," adds humanity to the thankless role of the authoritarian film-studio owner Oliver Niles. And Tom Noonan is perfect as the buddy to impart real-life wisdom to "Mrs. Norman Maine."

People who love Judy Garland certainly should go for this improved and more watchable classic, even if they already have a prior version at home. I think lovers of musicals in general will agree that A STAR IS BORN deserves a place among the tip-top musicals of the 1950s, whether or not they are satisfied with the cardboardish ersatz for Chapters 14-16. Just hop over those with your DVD remote and find out what Warner Bros. left after its butchering! A great film at a great price; go for it.

A Star is Born
I read all the reviews listed prior to purchasing and I didn't read anywhere that reconstruction actually meant that they put black and white still pictures in the place of the missing moving picture sequences. At one point I felt like I was watching a slideshow presentation with music and sound! I had no idea the movie would be so choppy and for that I'm deeply disappointed.

I don't feel like it was worth the price and I probably won't ever watch it again. Too bad too, because what I did see of the performance was good. Unfortunately, I felt like I only got 3/4 of the movie and the rest was fill in the blanks.

The Ultimate Musical
The best. Absolutely the best film Hollywood has ever offered. It is a musical which has not only heartwarming songs and dances but one with a real plot, a story so often repeated in this world- a story of dizzying rise and dizzying fall- and a story which stood up to being exposed without the songs.