American Cinematographer - February 1984 - 39

pounding

ocean,

on

the soundtrack, and Mason, his

life a ruin that is about to overrun Garland's life, with
the widescreen distance between the two ghost-like
reflected images creates a sense of tragedy as a dignified
determination takes hold of Mason's character.
The sequence was
a process shot of
the window. It was a small but

soundstage, with
on

and

integral

to

filmed on a
the ocean reflected
illuminating touch

the

sequence.
As with everything

Cukor did, the
work is integral, but never obvious. He never
pushed anything on the audience; he let them gradually
discover things for themselves. As film critic Henri
Langlois described Cukor's style at a retrospective,
"Everything is in half-tones, suggested and never over-

but quietly believable and honest. He let the actors
develop this by bringing them down; he kept telling
them to do less and less. So that what you get is this
bare bones simplicity."
Cukor's simplicity didn't negate the
fact that A Star Is Born became the primer for using
the CinemaScope process successfully. "Working on
that picture, we all learned a lot. We became experts in
CinemaScope through trial and error," Gene Allen
said, in summing up his feelings about the film.
"Lor

process

lenses

we were

instance, the fact that the

using had such

a

limited depth of field

stressed."
This

manner

of

filming is particularly

noticeable in the way Cukor shot his musical numbers.
"Cukor believed in trying to shoot musical numbers as
if they were one shot," Gene Allen recalls. "We had
great camera

movements."
Cukor's fluid

style for the
style that seemed to avoid cuts,
choreographing both the musical number and
camera

musical numbers, a
meant

the

camera.

"If you

watch Liza Minelli today,
her mother, Judy Garland.
Her arms shoot out unexpectedly. When you're in a
slot photographing Judy with both hands in the pic¬
ture, and suddenly Judy strains up and pushes her
hands out... so we'd have to go back and re-set all the
marks for the dolly. We almost had to have a choreog¬
rapher for a grip, in order to hit all the camera marks,"
she has the

same

gestures as

Allen said.

Cukor, who died in 1983 the night
before he was scheduled to see the restored version of
the film, considered A Star Is Born one of the best

examples of his work, and a prime example of his
adage: "In moviemaking you respect every contribu¬
tion, but you have to work for the same aim, which is
the director's aim." Cukor's aim was to use the limita¬
tions of CinemaScope - while possibly extending those
limitations in order to make a subtly stylish musical
that had something deeply dramatic and moving at its
-

created staging problems. So, we could either have the
lined up and spread across the screen as they did
in The Robe, or we could find a way around the prob¬
lem. We found a way around the problem. "What we
did was have the actors in the foreground turn their
backs to the camera and go out of focus, so that the
actors in the background could be in focus," Allen
said.
This technique was a forerunner to
the rack focus shots that were a staple of television and
features in the late sixties and early seventies.
actors

Quick cutting rhythms, stylized

core.

of color (and the lack of color), process work that is
almost invisible
the technical innovations go on
and on. Yet it is not the innovations that made Cukor a

that aim. Unfortu¬

great director or A Star Is Born a great movie, a kind of
summation of 50's moviemaking. What made Cukor a

and Ira Gershwin all contributed

to

nately, Warner's aim, at the time, wasn't the same as
Cukor's. So, a large part of the film's substance was left
on the cutting room floor. As a result the version which
was put into general release prompted the comment
that its parts were greater than the whole.
Now, however, thanks to Haver and
his staff, the Academy, Warner Brothers, and Eastman
Kodak, the picture can be seen as Cukor intended.
"What they took out of Cukor's ver¬
sion of A Star Is Born, is what he was strongest in,
developing character and relationships. These charac¬
ters and relationships are not dramatically staggering,

February 1984

.

great director,
movie has, as

innovations,

as

.

James Mason

Esther

as

Blodgett and

Norman Maine in the
1954 version of A
Star Is Born.

use

photography, Gene Al¬
len's production design, George Huene's controlled
use of color and tone, and the music of Harold Arlen

Sam Leavitt's

Judy Garland and

.

and, in

turn,

A Star Is Born

a great

Haver says, "nothing to do with his
much as it does with his sensitivity and

attitude toward civilization. In the sense that his char¬
acters and their environment and what makes them
work and their relationships with each other is the

thing that makes his films work."
Perhaps that is something all film¬
makers should remember in this period of whiz bang
effects movies, with roller coaster ride pacing, and no
humanity.
■

American

Cinematographer

37
American Cinematographer - February 1984

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