Critics reviews

One of the remarkable things about it is how assuredly Cukor uses the [CinemaScope] format—it feels as though he had been directing with it for years. (Not only was it the first movie he made in widescreen; it was also his first musical and his first feature in color.) Cukor gets plenty of mileage out of the inherent spectacle of ‘Scope, particularly during the musical numbers and the scenes involving lots of extras.

Not only does it drill deep into private wounds, it all but flaunts the fact that those wounds have one very famous owner. Under the weight of all her public struggles—her notorious unreliability on set, an acrimonious departure from MGM, two suicide attempts—Judy Garland on screen in 1954, at the age of thirty-one, would have transformed any standard-issue showbiz musical into a vessel for autobiography, recasting the role of singer-actor-superstar as confessor

Cukor brings his great singer to life dramatically, granting her an extraordinary range—open yet guided—of expressive freedom, and he films her with an eye that is at the same time compassionate and unsparing, that respects the agony it faces head-on.

Fundamentally, A Star Is Born is an immaculate showcase for a prodigious, a not wholly expected talent. One expected the vivacity and the assurance with which the musical numbers are put across – but not, quite, the extra emotional edge that makes a song like The Man That Got Away so electrifying.