Camille Paglia on "A Star Is Born"

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 4:47pm

The Streisand version just came out on DVD and it reminded me of this Paglia article from Salon.com:

"Finally, I took enormous pleasure in Love Stories Channel's broadcast of the Barbra Streisand version of "A Star Is Born" (1976), one of the most absurd yet strangely engrossing entries in Hollywood's megalomania chronicles. Kris Kristofferson, by career a singer rather than actor, has never gotten sufficient credit for his sensitive, agonized portrayal of a rugged pop star in decline.

Despite the unbearably corny, faux-rock score (the musical director was schmaltz elf Paul Williams), there are many fine moments in this film -- such as the scene during the Streisand character's first visit to the Los Angeles mansion where Kristofferson very credibly improvises lyrics to a dreamy song she has been composing. It's very rare that movies catch the texture and haphazard spontaneity of collaborative art-making.

My favorite moments in "A Star Is Born" -- which I realized with consternation that I'd been watching time without number for a quarter of a century -- are when the goaded, leather-clad Kristofferson hurls a trim, black-and-white case of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey through a glass partition at an obnoxious DJ ("Baby Jesus") and then when Streisand, finding her husband in bed with a dopy groupie, flies toward the camera like a banshee and whips a pool cue through a shelf of exploding liquor bottles. "You can trash your life, but you're not going to trash mine!" she proclaims -- which I've always felt should be a feminist rubric, far more effective than legal restraining orders for women with abusive spouses or boyfriends.

Of course we cannot omit the high-camp finale when, after the James Dean-like death crash of the Kristofferson character on the open road, Streisand, apparently concerned that the movie not be stolen by her costar, imprisons the audience for 16 more endless minutes of moping, weeping and wailing. The musical climax is a single long take in close-up as, clad in a white pantsuit (having internalized her angel man?), she sings herself from grief to acceptance to genuine ecstasy in what is supposed to be a concert hall but feels like the underground tomb in "Aida."

Nor is Streisand done with us mere mortals. As the credits slowly unfurl over a still of her with head flung back and arms extended in crucifixion mode, we are informed of her mind-boggling omnipresence in this project, beginning with her role as executive producer. One line reads "Musical concepts by Barbra Streisand" and another (the pièce de résistance) "Ms. Streisand's clothes from ... her closet."

Divas this ruthless, daring, tasteless and grand are born, not made.

[WalkOn]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 10:39pm

Camille Paglia certainly got more pleasure out of it than I ever did.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 10:40pm

"schmaltz elf Paul Williams"

She got away with that??

[touchmeinthemorning]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 10:54pm

If Paglia can get away with her behavior towards Julie Burchill, she can get away with just about anything. And if you don't know about that feud, you MUST read about it...it is a battle of a bit**es if ever there was one.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/13/06 at 11:55pm

I hate Julie Burchill. Although I must say I stopped reading her long before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I did wonder what the self-proclaimed "dyed in the wool pro-Soviet expansionist" thought of that.