Rent A Star Is Born (1937)

Worth seeing for Fredric March - A Star Is Born review by MR

Rather a clunky, coarse film, but well worth watching to see Fredric March at work, a great subtle actor.

Best Version. - A Star Is Born review by Steve

The first (and only non-musical) version of the durable backlot classic. The story won the Oscar, even though it's a rip off of the 1932 film What Price Hollywood? They also share a sharp satirical edge aimed at Hollywood life. Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) is the small town girl who makes it on the big screen as the American sweetheart, Vicki Lester.

She is given a break, then a wedding ring, by alcoholic has-been Norman Maine (Fredric March) who must then watch as her career eclipses his. Gaynor was only 31 when she made this but she's so associated with silent cinema that she feels a little old fashioned for a star of the late thirties. The Oscar she accepts in the film, is the one she won in real life a decade earlier.

Ironically, her performance is overshadowed by her co-star. March pulls of the difficult trick of being the egotistical drunkard who burns all his bridges back to the studios and also the husband that Vicki is plausibly in love with. I don't think any of the other Norman Maines quite manage that. His charm penetrates through the self-destructiveness and we feel the poignancy of the flaws of damaged people.

It's an attractive production in Technicolor with a fine, sentimental score from Max Steiner. Seen from the present day, there is the interest of a glimpse behind the scenes in golden age Hollywood. Like the skit when Gaynor does rapid fire impressions of Hepburn, Garbo and Mae West at a party. Perhaps it's a little ponderous, but it's my favourite A Star is Born.