A Star is Born (1954)

A residual of musical month, this one was a late arrival from my library rentals so it took me a little while to get to. Not to mention this is a 3 hour film. Starring Judy Garland and James Mason the restored version that I watched had a number of pieced together scenes where we had photo stills and stock archive audio to make the film how it was originally intended. This is only the second time I've seen a film like this with Greed last month using the same method. With that film it worked though, a silent film that already has subtitle frames, stills and text aren't so bad. This one was just strange for me, I can't get lost in a film when it is being pieced together for me.

This might be one of Garland's best films though. She has an array of great performances, sadly I was a little over watching musicals when I got to this one, and 3 hours made for a lot of song and dance sequences. I thought it had a great central plot and a sad overall story, the length however was just a bit too much. There was a reason they edited all that stuff out.... because it was too long... I didn't need the stills to recreate it being too long.

Vote: 7/10

IMDB Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047522/

Share: