A STAR IS BORN (1954, Blu-ray released June 22, 2010 – MSRP $34.99)
I hate musicals. I’ve never been able grasp this notion that people might just randomly burst out in song to melodically illustrate some aspect of their lives. It’s weird. As such, I thought I would hate George Cukor‘s A Star is Born as well, a grand musical Judy Garland vehicle. But the songs make narrative sense here. And that narrative is extraordinary!
The beautiful hardcover digibook that the Blu-ray edition of A Star is Born is packaged within opens with a quote describing the film as Warner‘s great film, their “…masterpiece which would sum up all of (the stuio’s) skills in a tremendous effort of talent and will.” I can see that. Star is Cukor’s Cinemascope masterpiece – the epic rise of a Hollywood star aside the tragedy of her husband’s fall. Every scene is meticulously crafted, rehearsed to perfection and shot beautifully. But the real star here was meant to be the lavish musical numbers. Personally, I find them to be far too numerous and each one far too long. I get the point – Garland’s character is a movie star performing these lengthy, pithy songs in her films. I don’t need to see every number in its entirety, though. The highlight of the entire picture for me has got be James Mason, as Garland’s husband, who struggles with his career and the devil in the bottle (perhaps one as a result of the other.) He’s astounding and represents the heart and soul of the story. He’s a brilliant one-man-inciting-incident and, as far as I’m concerned, outshines Garland at every turn.
A Star is Born arrives this week on Blu-ray in a brand new two-disc set from Warner. And it’s a beauty! This is another one of those sets that every film enthusiast should invest in. Much like their recently released Dr. Zhivago, Star is packaged in a 40-page digibook, with the feature on Disc one and the extras on Disc Two.
The feature looks and sounds tremendous here, considering the limitations of the source material. Those who watch it without context may, upon cursory examination, find the image quality painfully close to that of the old DVD at times or may express displeasure at the ‘Scope distortion that exists between the edges of the frame and the central part of the image (objects seem wider in the middle of the frame while becoming thin and slightly bent nearer the edges.) Let me assure you, what you’re seeing is as accurate a representation of the best existing elements possible, scanned at a whopping 6K resolution and restored as best as modern tech will allow. The version of Star on Blu-ray is the 1983 restoration, exhaustingly researched and assembled by the late archivist/historian Ronald Haver. The source footage used to assemble the edit ranges from the marvelously preserved to grainy 16mm blow-up to…well, the non-existent – there are entire scenes missing from the film replaced with recovered and restored audio, fitted with appropriate stills representing what might have been had the original 182-minute version of the film not been cut so drastically and permanently down to a criminal 154-minutes. But one thing strikes you throughout a viewing of A Star is Born on Blu-ray – that a great deal of love and hard work went into recreating the film at its most complete and the end result is remarkable, if not flawed.
And the same love and hard work went into harvesting various three mag-striped release prints from the studio as well as the Library of Congress (amongst other sources) to recreate the film’s original four-track stereo mag master, which was erased more than fifty years ago. The result is a brand new, fairly clean and boisterous DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that may be even more impressive than the accompanying video! The isn’t modern audio work here but the results are impressive and no doubt the finest Star has sounded at home.
The Blu-ray disc, as I mentioned above, comes packaged with a second disc, a DVD replete with bonus features that run, altogether nearly four hours! The unfortunate thing here is that there isn’t a documentary, featurette or retrospective to be found among those extras. It’s a crying shame, considering the struggle to create the film in 1954, followed by the struggle to save it in 1983 – events only touched on within the digibook essay. Oh, and in the 3-minute introduction to the film. The contents of the DVD are primarily deleted scenes, screen tests, alternate takes, outtakes, newsreel footage and trailers. There’s also 107-minutes of archival audio, including outtakes, radio broadcasts and music. As a bonus, you’ll have a laugh at Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck in the Looney Tunes short, A Star is Bored!
