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George Cukor's introduction of the starry-eyed waitress with her face pressed to a glossy fanzine is also an introduction of Constance Bennett, such a sinuous camera subject that her Brown Derby customers ask the obvious question: "Why aren't you in the movies, dearie?" The fading director (Lowell Sherman) enters elegantly sloshed, dropping gardenias on everybody's plates and taking off in jalopy with the heroine by his side. (His explanation for his drinking: "Wanna be bored all the time?") Hollywood is a place that takes frivolity seriously, Sherman in rolled-up sleeves is a top artisan getting a scene done and with little time for an amateur like the young hopeful he's invited to the set. Simply being photogenic is not enough, Bennett teaches herself the art with a couple of lines on a staircase (cf. Antonioni's La Signora Senza Camelie) and is declared a star in the screening room. "We make her America's pal," announces the stout producer (Gregory Ratoff), her rise is a swirl of Tinseltown anecdotes filled with piquant sketches of dyspeptic bosses and smirking gossip-peddlers. Frenzied fans picking at the diva's gown suggests a note of Nathanael West dropped into a F. Scott Fitzgerald novella, the song at the café is splintered into shards of studio technique (the cranking of the camera, the maneuvering of the spotlight, the adjustments of the microphone). Wandering in and out of the main plot (and spiking it with welcome vinegar) is Lowell's crumbling filmmaker, who leaves the world in a striking Slavko Vorkapich montage, an accelerating whirlpool of snapshots capped by a soupçon of slow-mo. Cukor's own A Star Is Born is but one of the countless remakes. With Neil Hamilton, Brooks Benedict, Louise Beavers, and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |