176. A Star Is Born

Song - Woman in Love (Barbra Streisand)

Movie: A Star Is Born (Frank Pierson, 1976)

I very strongly, somewhat irrationally, disliked Bradley Cooper's A Star Is Born, a film so depressed by its own existence that its hatred for the world was seemingly pouring out of every shot. It felt like a film created by Jackson Maine himself to justify his own vapid nihilism, filled with aggrandizingly portentous self-pity and self-seriousness. It didn't even care enough to play out most of its songs or to stage them in an interesting way. So I was very much looking forward to use the 1976 version as a cudgel to beat Cooper into oblivion, especially after seeing that it was written by Joan Didion and John Patrick Dunne. Having loved The Panic in Needle Park, I thought they would know what to do with a grand romance between two self-destructive lovers. 

Anyway, you see where this is going. Pierson's A Star Is Born made me respect Cooper's film more. It may be the more honest version of this story. Besides, whatever I may think of its point of view (worth noting that my view of the film as an annoyingly nihilistic screed is not shared by most who have seen it), at least it had one, and it was directed with purpose and conviction. More importantly, Lady Gaga and Cooper give better performances and have far more chemistry than Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. The latter are in fact on completely different wavelengths. Streisand overacts and accentuates every single gesture attracting all attention to herself, which may be diva arrogance or the only way to realistically approach acting across Kristofferson here. If she would have gone down to his level, the whole film would have sunk completely. He gives a strangely blank performance. "There is no pain visible on your face" is the truest line spoken in the film. 

Despite this, there are some things that work better here than in Cooper's film, and some of that may actually have to do with the contributions of Didion and Dunne. The centerpiece performance here, where Streisand first stuns the world with her talent comes way after she has fallen in love with Kristofferson. In the 2019 version Cooper first helps Gaga go viral with 'Shallow' and only afterwards does Gaga start seriously falling in love with him. More importantly, it's also only after she falls in love with him that Gaga realises the extent of Cooper's brokenness. The film shows the audience how much of a dysfunctional alcoholic Cooper is, but that's not how it is in the early scenes with Lady Gaga. While clearly not 100%, he is charming, gentlemanly and professional. This is not how Kristofferson is presented to Streisand. He is an annyoing and disfunctional asshole from the start and she barely ever sees him in a different way. For us, neutral observers, it may be hard to see how she can fall in love with him, but why should we need to know and accept her heart and her thinking? Just like Kitty Winn, in The Panic In Needle Park she is allowed to have irrational personal feelings that only she fully understands.  These decisions make Kristofferson seem much less like a tortured martyr than Cooper, and give much less the impression that Streisand owes him something.

This film has also much love for music and for performing and for engaging the audience in the performance. In the majoirty of the music scenes, the film forgets the plot for a bit and entirely cedes the limelight to the performances. They are not meant for character development, but for highlighting the talents of Kristofferson and Streisand and the joy the audience gets from them. In the end, this does lead to the hilariously misguided final moments in which it seems Streisand has completely forgotten the tragedy that just befell her. Worse, not one of the songs she sings as a famous star is nearly as good as 'Queen Bee', the song she sings as a struggling lounge singer.