Product: Star Is Born (UK PAL Region 0)
Rating: 5.0
Mrs. Parker, we're needed
I'll confess: I saw this movie on 16mm when I used to run the projector at an art film house back in college. I can't comment on the quality of the film being sold here; I begin with the caveat that my comments are on the content of the film only.First, I am compelled to add the historical note that Janet Gaynor is the first winner of the Oscar for Best Actress in the history of the Academy Awards (1927, mainly for her work in Sunrise).Next, I want to say that screenwriter Dorothy Parker's sarcasm is sometimes so thick, that one must watch the film several times, in order to see through it, layer by layer, before one begins to see her subtle wit. With repeated viewings, the film is funny, then tragic, then funny again.I have not seen the other versions of this film on purpose. This film is so gloriously complex, and made up of so many tiny parts, but with not a seam showing, that I am afraid seeing one of the others would only spoil the original for me. (One of the great regrets in my life is seeing Mel Brooks' To Be or Not To Be.)This film belongs among the immortals-- or at least among the pantheon of the truly stupendous-- the films that are difficult to describe because one lacks the vocabulary, because ground-breaking, wonderous, magnificent, and all the superlatives have been over-applied to the slightly superior. I wish these words had been reserved for this film. This one, and the rare others that actually teach us about the world, and ourselves-- that send us from the theatre with new eyes: Citizen Kane, Metropolis, Tristana, I Heard the Mermaids Singing, Rashomon, Baghdad Cafe, Children of Paradise....