This film is better known for its 1954 remake, which is a superior movie but this is pretty good, too. It doesn’t start very well, following the ambitious Esther (Janet Gaynor) who wants to be famous and goes to Hollywood. Gaynor was a silent film star but you can’t really tell from this film; Esther here isn’t very nice, she’s a bit calculating and greedy. In the 1954 version you really got the impression that Esther as played by Judy Garland was (a) really talented and (b) really loved her husband. Here you don’t. When Gaynor tries to give up her career at the end you know she really resents it – and her husband.
Around half an hour in, though, Norman Maine appears as played by Frederick March and the film improves incredibly. March is excellent as the pitiful movie star on the slide – you believe he is talented and that he loves his wife.
The satire on Hollywood is very sharp, though Adolfe Menjou is way too cuddly and nice to make a believable movie producer. Lionel Stander is better as the nasty press agent – initially a figure of fun but then revealed to be a prick (though Jack Carson was even better in the remake). It makes more sense in the 1954 version to end it at the Oscars and start it at a movie premiere (where this film ends). But its cynicism and look at the cruelty of Hollywood help it vault the age. In colour but in that crappy mid 1930s colour.
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