A Star is Born: Deluxe Edition Directed By: George Cukor Starring: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, Tommy Noonan Studio: Warner Bros. Year: 1954 Rated: PG Film Length: 176 minutes Aspect Ratio: 2.55:1 Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish Release Date: June 22, 2010 The Film ****½ A Star is Born follows the romantic relationship between nightclub singer Esther Blodgett (Judy Garland) and movie star Norman Maine (Mason). They meet at an event where a clever bit of improvising by warm-up performer Esther prevents a drunken Norman from making a complete fool of himself. After sobering up a bit, Norman seeks Esther out at a nightclub to thank her and is impressed by her talent when he sees her perform. Norman presses studio boss Oliver Niles (Bickford) to give Esther a chance, and as the title suggests, Esther, re-christened "Vicky Lester" by the studio publicity department, quickly ascends to a level of stardom that eclipses even Norman. Norman's devotion to Esther remains constant, but his alcoholism and self-destructive tendencies present a problem as they gradually alienate him from the financial backers of the studio and many of his handlers including cynical studio publicity man Matt Libby (Carson). George Cukor's remake of the early Technicolor hit for Producer David O. Selznick and Director William Wellman was Warner Brothers' spare no expense event release of 1954. The film's production budget was estimated to be in the neighborhood of five million dollars inclusive of Warner shelling out for the CinemaScope widescreen process and lab work by Technicolor. It was also the first cinematic role for Judy Garland since 1950's Summer Stock, and George Cukor's first ever film in color (and CinemaScope). Originally released with a three hour running time, it was later cut at the studio's direction (and reportedly against Cukor's strenuous objections) to 154 minutes. The deletions included a nine scene sequence early in the film involving Norman being whisked away on location for weeks and unable to contact Esther after agreeing to arrange for her audition. In addition to a number of shorter trims, editors also deleted musical performances of "Here's What I'm Looking For", "Lose that Long Face", a reprise of the latter, and a shampoo commercial jingle from the aforementioned sequence where Esther and Norman fail to connect. Film historian Ronald Haver undertook an exhaustive effort to restore the film to its original intended running length in the early 1980s. The jumping off point for Haver's efforts were reports that an intact audio track had been found for the entire long version of the film (as it turned out, a magnetic source with separate mono dialog, music, and effects tracks). Using this plus the film editor's script as a guide, Haver and his team were able to unearth enough footage to restore the musical numbers. They were not able to locate complete footage from the excised dramatic scenes, and where necessary, these sequences were replaced by a combination of still frames with panning and zooming effects as well as some outtake and b-roll footage discovered in places such as Warner's stock footage library. Aside from the viewing public, the primary beneficiary of Haver's restoration efforts is James Mason. While the studio edits skillfully whittled the plot down to its essential mechanical needs, they undermined its thematic purpose. In order for the film to work as tragedy, the audience must be able to identify strongly with the character of Norman Maine. Many of the deleted scenes were illustrative of Norman's unflagging devotion to Esther. This constancy is the quality which redeems Norman in the eyes of viewers, and the central tragedy of the film lies in how this is not enough to save him. Mason gives an outstanding performance striking the necessary balance between sympathetic and self-destructive such that one could understand why Esther loves him and why characters such as Jack Carson's cynical publicity man detest him. The studio cuts removed a few weights from the "sympathetic" side of the scale, and the film's melodrama is felt much more deeply with them restored. After leaving MGM with her life and career in a bit of a shambles, Judy Garland spent the four years prior to A Star is Born establishing herself as a concert performer and recording artist with much success. Other than the fact that hard living had made her appear as much as a decade older than her 32 years at the time of the film's release, the part of the plucked from obscurity Esther Blodgett was tailor made for her. Key musical sequences in the film are staged in such a way that she is either performing them on stage, in a nightclub, or in a recording studio. The biggest exception is the show-stopping Born in a Trunk sequence at the film's center which resonates equally with casual fans, who will be reminded of her many elaborately stage production numbers at MGM , and with more devoted fans, who will be tuned into the parallels between the song and Garland's own back story. The Harold Arlen/Ira Gershwin songs are rarely tied into the plot directly, but they do have a tendency to resonate in the viewer's mind after the themes of longing and loss come to the forefront in the film's final act. Garland's performance as an actress and singer are on par with her best work at MGM. The film is about as definitive an example of a "star turn" as one could hope to find with respect to both Garland and Mason. For three hours, they are carrying the film on their backs individually or together with only three significant supporting roles (plus a lot of studio resources, a masterful director, and a top notch technical team) to help them along. Jack Carson was never better than in his supporting role in this film. His character seems to have wandered in from a Billy Wilder film, but he hits just the right cynical tone to give the film some bite and keep the melodrama from becoming overwhelming, at least until the last reel when it is supposed to be. The Video ***½ The remastered SD DVD improves on its predecessor. The film is spread across two dual-layered sides of a disc allowing for a subtantial increase in bitrate compared to the previous DVD release. As a result, the somewhat coarse grain looks about as filmlike as SD DVD can manage, whereas the earlier disc had more noticeable instances of digital noise interacting with the film grain. With very few exceptions, a decent job is done of making the various generations and qualities of source elements sit well next to each other, and it appears that some signifcant but tasteful applications of digital tools were used to create this consistency without introducing distracting artifacts. There are a handful of opticals, mostly in the first half of the film, where heavy artifacts appear such as glowing along high contrast edges, but these are brief and infrequent. The Audio *** Audio is courtesy of an English Dolby Digital 5.1 track. This 5.1 re-purposing of the film's original multi-track stereo mix puts all dialog dead center with music and effects in wider stereo and infrequent use of the surrounds. Source issues are evident with noticeable limitations in fidelity, even by 1950s mag-track standards, on dialog, vocals, and effects, although the orchestral score generally sounds quite good. Alternate language dubs are available in French and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. The Extras ***½ The special features on this disc are all presented in 4:3 video with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound unless otherwise indicated below. Where special features are carryovers from the previous DVD release of the film, I have highlighted them in grey. Note that many of these carryover features have new spoken introductions from an unidentified narrator replacing the text screens that introduced them on the older release. The lack of any sort of retrospective features is a bit disappointing, but the context provided by the narrator helps a bit in this regard. Introduction (3:02) is a montages of clips, outtakes, and behind the scenes footage from the film that offers a quick run down of the special features on the disc as well as a brief appreciation of the film from an unidentified narrator. The Man that Got Away Deleted Scenes (22:23 w/Play All) is a collection of multiple alternate versions of Judy Garland's performance of "The Man that Got Away" from a crucial scene early in the film. They were filmed at different times in the film's production and show how much effort went into getting the scene just right via variations in elements such as wardrobe, lighting, and camera placement. Note: While the deleted scenes labeled "Brown Dress #2" and "Brown Dress #3" below were included on the previous DVD release of the film, I did not flag them as such via "grey highlighting". The older DVD presented a single camera take in 16:9 enhanced widescreen, while on this release, two different camera takes are shown simultaneously via split screen in 4:3 video. - Pink Blouse(5:12)
- Brown Dress #1(4:50)
- Brown Dress #2(4:24) (split screen)
- Brown Dress #3(4:11) (split screen)
- Brown Dress #4(3:44) (split screen medium close-ups)
- Norman Maine's Finale (2:15) with original "Man That Got Away" underscore
Film Effects Reel (:55) is narration over outtake effects shots in both Technicolor and EastmanColor CinemaScope filmed outside Graumman's Chinese Theater and a very brief clip of a blue-tinted version of the "Night of Stars" sequence.
A Star is Born Premiere in Cinemascope (2:06) consists of color CinemaScope footage from the premiere with a narrator identifying the various celebrities pictured.
A Star is Bored (7:12) is a vintage 1956 Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes Cartoon directed by Friz Freleng in which Daffy Duck stews with jealousy over Bugs Bunny's fame and pursues his own stardom with constant comical frustration. Under the heading of "Audio Vault" are a number of audio-only features. The menu screen is layed out in a somewhat confusing manner with two outtakes and two vintage radio pieces listed together underneath a "Play All" option that only applies to the outtakes and a separate menu selection for the Recording Sessions. Detailed contents are as follows: Outtakes
Vintage Radio
- Judy Garland Promotional radio spot in which she is interviewed by Louella Parsons to promote A Star is Born during its production. It sounds like a high quality magnetic tape source.
- Someone at Last Rehearsal (10:33)
- Someone at Last Extended Playback (7:16)
- My Melancholy Baby (7:06)
- Black Bottom (1:48)
- Swanee (4:56)
Packaging The film is split across two sides of a double-sided double-layered DVD-18 "flipper" disc with the intermission occuring right after the "Born in a Trunk" production number. A second single-sided single-layered DVD-5 disc contains all of the extras. They are enclosed in a standard sized DVD case with a hinged tray allowing it to accomodate two discs. The two-sided disc goes in the hinged tray to minimize chances of scratching one of the playing surfaces. The hard case is in turn enclosed in a cardoard slipcover which exactly duplicates the same graphics. The disc authoring is straightforward except for the extras disc which has the unwieldy layout for the "Audio Vault" selections mentioned above as well as a "dead-end" Languages menu screen telling you there is only English audio with no subtitle options. Summary ****½ George Cukor's A Star is Born gets a modest but noticeable bump in video quality and extras with this Deluxe Edition DVD release. The video enhancements will be most noticeable on large projection displays where the improvement in compression will provide a much less digital and more film-like presentation than the earlier DVD release, and the more consistent quality from scene to scene despite source elements of varying quality will be more noticeable. New vintage special features including additional outtakes, a cartoon, and more footage of the film's spectacular premiere are welcome, but the film still lacks the retrospective documentary or commentary track that it deserves.
