The Star
|
List Price: Our Price: $11.10 You Save: $8.88 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.90 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Star
Movie Review: Sterling Hayden could rescue me ANYTIME...
Summary: 4 Stars
Yes, of course, this movie is a Bette Davis vehicle, and a worthy one, definitely worth seeing. As AllAboutEve, the iconic and great behind-the-scenes "at the Theatre" movie, TheStar is a lesser work, though still very much a behind-the-scenes look at an actress whose glory days seem to be well behind her. I have always thought that AllAboutEve and TheStar should be seen back-to-back. The first, so very glossy and glamorous and the latter very much its antithesis... definitely the darker side of a career... but perhaps great book-ends, one to the other.
What moves me to write, here, is the presence of Sterling Hayden, and I write in response to the negative comments made concerning his casting in and his performance in this movie.
Sterling Hayden was a fascinating man; he hated the Hollywood game, and hated being an actor... and longed to be sailing his boat(s); he was a serious sailor, and successfully authored non-fiction and fictional, critically much-acclaimed accounts of life on the high-seas. He was the quintessential Nordic-god: very tall, very blond and was "discovered" on a California beach when a very young man. Throughout his Hollywood career, as soon as they yelled "cut", he raced off the soundstage and down to his boat. I think it extremely interesting that, in TheStar he protrays a disillusioned onetime actor, who "gave it all up" and goes on to purchase a shipyard/dry-dock... and at the spur-of-the-moment, is always delighted to take the boat out onto the water for an afternoon of sailing. Is this art mimic-ing life? I wonder what his career might have been like had he really "taken-to" the Hollywood experience.
Besides being a wonderful physical foil to the physically diminutive Bette Davis in TheStar, his performance, which is very natural (not easy to achieve... acting while appearing NOT to be acting), is the rock to which Bette Davis clings as she gradually accepts the transition taking-place in her life... thus his natural performance is (also) the low-key foil to that of the over-the-top tumultuous Davis; it's all about contrasting... just like those two luminous and contrasting performances in AllAboutEve: that of Margo Channing and that of Karen Richards. And... the gentleman's voice!!! Tall. blond and commanding... yet calming and steady: 'certainly works for me!
Getting-back to AllAboutEve, who can forget that wonderful monologue in the stalled car, in which Margo Channing laments: 'the things a woman lets-go-of "on the way up", to move faster, she'll find later-on that she needs when resuming the one career that all women have in-common: being a woman'.
TheStar depicts the outcome of that pivotal monologue in AllAboutEve... being "just a woman" ... and not a star with a "French Provincial office". And, if being "just a woman"... when it's all said-and-done and all over with, means falling into the arms of a Sterling Hayden... again, all I can say is:
That would work just fine for me!
Movie Review: "Come on, Oscar, let's you and me go get drunk!"
Summary: 4 Stars
Bette Davis plays a booze-chugging Hollywood has-been in THE STAR, one of her better post-Warner Brothers acting assignments.
To say that Margaret Elliot (Bette Davis) has hit the skids would be an understatement. Flat stoney broke, about to be kicked out of her apartment, and unable to find acting work, the former Oscar-winning megastar is reduced to a glimmer of her former self. Following an all-night drinking binge--capped off by a spin around Beverly Hills with her Oscar in tow--Margaret is arrested. She's bailed out by a former co-star (Sterling Hayden). "When you're a star, you don't stop being a star", Margaret keeps telling her teenage daughter Gretchen (Natalie Wood). But stars must also live in reality...something Margaret will struggle terribly with.
Bette Davis must have identified a lot with the script of THE STAR, though I don't believe she ever did sink as low as her character does in the movie. Screenwriters Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert actually based the character of Margaret on another celebrity--none other than Davis' arch-rival Joan Crawford. The writers had been close friends of Crawford's but the relationship had soured by the time they started work on THE STAR. Davis must have relished the chance to take a swipe at Crawford--the performance is delicious. You've gotta love the scene where Margaret prepares for a screentest by rolling her fringe into bangs, applying thickly-caked lipstick and drawing high arches for her eyebrows...remind you of anyone with the initials J.C.?!
For the scene in which Margaret goes on an alcoholic bender with her Oscar statuette, Bette Davis provided one of her own (I like to think it was the award she won for "Dangerous", in which she played another actress on the skids). Another twist is the casting of Sterling Hayden as Margaret's love interest (he would later co-star with Joan Crawford in the cult favourite "Johnny Guitar"). Natalie Wood, playing daughter Gretchen, gives a distinguished performance. The cast also features Warner Anderson, Minor Watson, June Travis and Fay Baker.
The DVD also includes a new featurette ("How Real is the Star?"), and the trailer. Highly-recommended for both Davis and Crawford fans.
(Single-sided, single-layer disc). Also available as part of The Bette Davis Collection (The Star / Mr. Skeffington / Dark Victory / Now, Voyager / The Letter)
Movie Review: Stark Film Illustrating The Tragic Downsides Of Movie Stardom
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Star", from 1952 stars movie legend Bette Davis in a stark and none too flattering portrayal of a washed actress desperatly trying to recapture her long lost stardon. This choice of role was in actual fact a brave move for Davis at this time as she was literally experiencing in real life what her movie character of Margaret Elliot goes through in the script. Having started the 1950's decade brilliantly as a free lance actress scoring a triumph in her Oscar nominated performance in the classic "All About Eve", Davis went into a rapid career decline after this and experienced a decade of work in non successful movies with plenty of telelvision work done to pay the bills. "The Star", despite being compared unfavourably to Davis' earlier triumph in the show biz themed "All About Eve", is an interesting and often starkly revealing effort that was one of the few bright spots in this dismal decade for Bette Davis. Its central theme is sadly one that has proven all too real in the careers of countless celebrities over the decades who have enjoyed the glittering heights of movie stardom only to then experience a decline leading to heartbreak and tragedy in all its many forms. Despite its low budget and grainy harsh photography that in no way spares its leading actress "The Star", is a significant story that in a non compromising way illustrates a Hollywood none of us want to see. The story has it all from the breakdowns, to the tarnish beneath the glitter, to the tragedy of performers who are no longer "Box Office", and are thus just "yesterday's news" to the Hollywood Moguls and the paying public. Bette Davis like every other maturing actress in the early 1950's was experiencing some elements of this fictional story in their own careers and lives and thats what makes the film such a fascinating insight into the ugly side of what it means to be a "Star", in Hollywood's dream factory.Movie Review: CATCH A FALLING STAR
Summary: 4 Stars
Bette Davis gives a stellar performance as Margaret Elliot once "the star," now a Hollywood has-been. Determined to get back on top again, she begs her agent to get her the lead in an up-coming studio movie. Seeing that the shine has worn off "the star," the agent politely declines. Davis flips! Her character goes into such despair over her failings that she goes out drunk driving, with her coveted "Oscar" along for the ride. Smashing into a tree, followed by a brawl with the cops, Davis lands in jail. With the jailbird's picture smeared on the front page of the papers, Davis is bailed out by one of her admirers, played by Sterling Hayden. Natalie Wood plays Davis' devoted daughter, who idolizes her mother and wants to live with her, instead of her father and stepmother. "The Star" is a delicious behind-the-scenes look at how fame and fortune can easily be lost and the sad out come for the totally obsessed. The dvd transfer is clean and sharp with just a few minor glitches here and there. The audio sounds great. The disc's featurette "How Real is the Star?" is a nice addition with the usual info and insights on the making of the movie. I recommend "The Star" to fans of Bette's later-year movies, such as: "Dead Ringer," "Pocket Full of Miracles," and especially "Hush....Hush, Sweet Charlotte." To me, Bette became even more intriguing and so much fun to watch in her later career. Young or old, Bette Davis is always "The Star."Movie Review: "Going.....going.....gone."
Summary: 4 Stars
Bette Davis plays Hollywood forgotten legend, Margaret Elliot. She is bankrupt and no longer remembered. She thinks that one more great movie role can put him back where she was.
The film goes through her drama of trying to regain her stardom. It's pretty good, but it is not like her similar role in "All About Eve". It is slow and dull at some points. However, it is enjoyable. It gives us the depressing truth of how a person who is forgotten and no longer loved by the people can be exiled. It also shows how actors and actresses are remembered more for their stardom and less about their great movies. It is not the greatest of movies, but one should take a look at it.
* By the way, there seems to be a misunderstanding about Bette Davis's Oscar nominations. The internet and the back of the DVD case for "The Star" claim that she earned her 9th Oscar nomination for this film. She was not nominated for this film. Here are her nominations and their numbers.
1. Of Human Bondage
2. Dangerous (Won)
3. Jezebel (Won)
4. Dark Victory
5. The Letter
6. The Little Foxes
7. Now, Voyager
8. Mr. Skeffington
9. All About Eve
10. What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?