'A star is born' could be considered the great American tragedy because it is a story that talks about love, the descent into hell, addictions and success through a romance between an amateur singer (in the first versions were actresses) who after meeting a successful star manages to launch his musical career.
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His stardom coincides with the fall in drugs and alcohol of his partner.
Cooper knows how to bring this story to the present. Take the rock atmosphere of the 70's version and the melodramatic point of the 50's, which was set, just like Wellman's in the world of cinema and adding a good dose of modernity through his direction manages to give him a new life to what could be a more than obsolete story.
He directs with overwhelming ease and professionalism, is not afraid to face something as big as a musical and is able to find in all scenes all the intimacy that history needs. His work oscillates between the general and the particular, and that is what brings everything so close to the viewer; presents his characters in clubs, concerts and their family lives, allowing to see that they are people and not record products, this will be what facilitates the approach to their emotions.
The combination of melodrama and musical is precisely the most successful part of the 1954 version because he never forgets what he is telling, despite the fact that in the musicals of the time most of the numbers stopped the narration for the show off stars, the cinemascope or the Technicolor.
Cooper's interpretation is a work of constant show. Beyond his facet as a singer, the physical wear of his character is something very complete and he does it with an excellent exercise of body and voice that never sounds fake. On the other hand, Lady Gaga is not from this world, to begin with because since she appears we forget that she is and, in addition, she is a great actress who is charismatic and sweet but also knows how to demonstrate the pain of the tortuous path along the that goes through his character.
Cooper gives him several close-ups where he can show all his expressiveness, demonstrating the great artist he is, the film with a special affection, almost as if it was his character who directed the film and not him, among all the scenes (there is one especially beautiful in which she sings 'La vie en rose' which turns out to be one of the most powerful moments that are remembered in the genre).
It is not, by far, a perfect movie and perhaps its biggest flaw is that dissolution of the musical, but it is wonderful to see how such a story can continue to have life and be so universal. None will be like the masterpiece that Cukor marked more than 60 years ago, but let's enjoy this one, let's forget about Streisand's and play a guess who will be the star (yet to be born) in 2040.
Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/332562-a-star-is-born
Critic: AAA