I hadn't seen the Judy Garland version of A STAR IS BORN before its airing on Reel 13, but I have been very familiar with the horror stories swirling around the production. As a matter of fact, the film is probably more famous for the backstory than it is for the film itself. Garland's husband Sidney Luft produced the film to somehow rescue her career that was in a tailspin, more due to her increasing addictions and mood swings than any on-screen failures. Apparently, Garland battled her demons and director George Cukor vehemently throughout the endless production, most famously during the shooting of the production number "The Man That Got Away" which she allegedly filmed in a drugged out state and only did one take of (it's all they needed…). The results of all this behind the scenes drama is one of the most schizophrenic performances in perhaps one of the most schizophrenic movies I've ever seen.
There are a handful of moments in the film in which Garland is just awful – overacting with no sense of character nuance or inner truth. There are other moments in the film – performing "The Man That Got Away", her "I hate me" speech and her love confession to James Mason - in which she is more honest and powerful than I've ever seen her. Similarly inconsistent, the film itself has this "Born in a Trunk" number that is twenty minutes long and does NOTHING to advance the narrative – it's entirely from a film within the film. And yet there are several wonderful private moments between Mason and Garland that range from touching (the "New World" number, though I think Cukor should have let her sing the whole thing a capella instead of just the first verse) to fun and joyful (the "Somewhere/Someone" number). Cukor handles these scenes and several others like them with extreme delicacy, choosing not to cut very much, but let the camera move fluidly with the actors. It's a bit theatrical in theory, but the staging is never proscenium-like, using the depth of the sets to keep things cinematic and visual.
The element that really rescues the film from being a shambles is the performance of James Mason as Norman Maine. Though in real life, Garland was the one struggling with addiction, it is ironically Mason's Maine character in the film that wages that war and does so in an intelligent, palpable manner. He is probably the most believable cinema drunk of the 50's, adding layers of self-loathing, pride, honor, pain, hope and love to his character which makes him simultaneously flawed and sympathetic – a balancing act that all actors attempt and only few achieve. It is truly an awesome performance. While A STAR IS BORN may have been a vehicle for Garland, it's really Mason's movie.