![]() Selznick, is frankly titled What Price Hollywood?, with certain different details-a love triangle, a child-but the outcomes and themes the same. The earliest riff on the story, also directed by Cukor and produced by David O. A young woman is plucked from obscurity by an older man who becomes both mentor and lover partly in response to her stratospheric rise, the man succumbs to the addiction and depression that predate their relationship the woman is simultaneously chastened, legitimized, and elevated by his death. The basic concept of A Star Is Born is undeniably a tad retrograde. Barbra had to bluster so Bradley could fly. A full rehabilitation may not be in order, but perhaps a reconsideration is. But in the context of Stars both past and present, the starring vehicle had the audacity to at least attempt what Cooper pulls off, updating the narrative and shedding at least some of its more unsavory implications. ![]() A defense of Streisand and her on-screen romance with Kris Kristofferson purely on artistic grounds would be nigh on impossible, nor shall I attempt one. Cooper has made a convincing and transporting love story, at long last giving the George Cukor–directed masterpiece the update it deserves.īut watching all the previous A Star Is Borns (or is it Stars Are Born?) in the lead-up to this weekend’s release, I found myself caught off guard by the soft spot I developed for the Streisand-Peters boondoggle, one that remains in place even after Cooper’s objective triumph. Influenced by ego and a desire for control, Streisand delivered a turgid and cringeworthy, if commercially successful, cautionary tale about stardom, if not the kind she intended. The rapidly solidifying consensus around the film holds that Cooper succeeds in ways that Streisand, enabled and exacerbated by her hairdresser-turned-producer boyfriend Jon Peters, failed. In this sense, it has been compared favorably with the 1954 version of the film starring Judy Garland-the second in name, though the third in spirit-and unfavorably to what The New York Times calls the “epically (empirically!) terrible” 1976 version starring, and infamously commandeered by, Barbra Streisand. ![]() ![]() Bradley Cooper’s 2018 rendition of A Star Is Born manages the impossible: bringing this seemingly old-fashioned story about fame into the present while retaining its classical, timeless appeal. ![]()
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