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A Star Is Born Movie Review

A Star Is Born is a 1954 musical film directed by George Cukor and starring Judy Garland and James Mason. It’s a film that is often wonderful, but overall unfortunately messy.

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“Hello, everybody.

This is Mrs. Norman Maine“

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The story is the same as in every other adaptation of the 1937 original, the film which remains the best version of this story in my honest opinion. This one does everything in the same manner in terms of the story, but with a much reduced impact. The only thing that is changed this time around is the musical genre and format as the movie is filled with countless songs, way too many in my book.

Yes, this adaptation has a lot of songs, but some are actually terrific, undoubtedly so. My standouts include The Man That Got Away, Someone at Last and Gotta Have Me Go with You. The third one is quite entertaining, and the first one is particularly memorable, wonderfully sung and the entire scene’s quite strong. It deserved its Oscar nomination without any doubt.

The story obviously held its power in those usual emotional beats that are always powerful to watch, in particular the Academy Awards acceptance speech was an excellent scene and the entire third act is great, very touching and the acting’s amazing in there. I also liked the central romance as the players are both wonderful and some of their interactions are undeniably sweet.

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However, this A Star Is Born is entirely ruined by its pace. Yes, in what was a truly terrible move, the film is over two and a half hours long, three hours if you count all the newly inserted scenes, which is usually the version that can be found on the Internet. With or without those particular sequences, the movie really stalls, and needlessly so. I am up for a long runtime if it is done in purpose of the story. This one, however, features abundant scenes that are pointless and just a giant waste of time. Those grind the movie to a halt and prevent it from reaching something greater and more beautiful as it could have reached easily without such a pace.

Where A Star Is Born excels at is in the acting performances. James Mason is fantastic as he always is. His performance is powerful in a difficult to play role, and he was perfectly cast to begin with as he fits the role like a glove. I always like in anything he is in, and this just might be his greatest ever performance, which says a lot.

But let’s talk about Judy Garland. I found her performance truly revelatory here. It fits her real life troubles, and obviously she related as she brought to the screen the necessary emotion and vulnerability, which shows in every single moment of hers. This just is her career-greatest performance as she powers through the movie with such unprecedented confidence, talent and a range of complex emotion that it’s a shame that she lost an Oscar to Grace Kelly in what is in retrospect one of the more problematic of the Academy’s choices.

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The movie’s also very well made with amazing production design, excellent cinematography and a great score. But George Cukor’s direction is weak for his standards and the movie is again overrated and only great sporadically.

The 1954 version of A Star Is Born is very well made technically speaking, it has some excellent musical numbers in it, plus some scenes are as expected very emotionally powerful. James Mason has probably never been better than in this powerhouse turn whereas Judy Garland delivered her career-best performance. She powered through this movie with such a confident, amazing performance that unfortunately did not garner her an Oscar win. Despite all of that, this movie is so long, highly plodding in its pacing and packed with so many pointless, overlong sequences that grind the film to a halt and prevent it from ever reaching greatness unfortunately.