Take another long look at ’70s Hollywood
Even if you think you know what 1976 looked like in Los Angeles, prepare to be amazed by the Barbra Streisand/Kris Kristofferson version of A Star is Born, which hits Netflix this weekend — a few months ahead of the Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper remake of the film — thanks to yet another of the streaming giant’s recent throwmoney-at-them deals. (Netflix will also stream six of Streisand’s vintage music specials.)
The pantsuits! The sparkly caftans! The shirts open to the waist, on both men and women! Streisand’s wild curls, backlit pink and purple as she sings! The qiana (a kind of silky nylon)! All courtesy of my favourite end-credit line of my youth: “Ms. Streisand’s clothes from … her closet.”
I was a 14-year-old in Pennsylvania when this film came out, and even I knew how oh-so-Hollywood it was. One of its producers, Jon Peters, was a Rodeo Drive hairdresser who had become Streisand’s boyfriend (he would later co-run Sony Pictures, where his pricey office reno was just the beginning of his stormy two-year tenure).
Its writers, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, were the hottest literary couple alive. The music was produced by Phil Ramone, and written by Paul Williams, Leon Russell and Kenny Loggins. Peters’ assistant, Laura Ziskin, would go on to produce Pretty Woman and head Fox 2000. In other words, it was 1970s L.A. in cinema form.
The version appearing on Netflix includes two new Streisand scenes — which boggles my mind, because the original cut was already two hours and 20 minutes long. Watching it again this week, I was reminded of what star power actually looked like: arena scenes filled with thousands of fans; a last shot that is a single, sevenminute close-up; and mainly, a long, long time devoted to character development.
The first 10 minutes focus on Kristofferson’s burned-out rocker, John Norman Howard. Streisand’s character, Esther Hoffman, doesn’t enter until minute 11. But then we get a full 45 minutes of courtship — scene after scene about Esther, in which she proves her talent, integrity and belief in the healing power of love. Streisand was 34 and Kristofferson 40, so their story has a grown-up quality to it.
There’s only one sex scene, and it’s the ultimate in softfocus discretion. Mostly there are looks. For long seconds, in several scenes, the camera cuts from one to the other as they look at each other. He looks at her while she sings. He looks at her while she sleeps.
After she gets out of a car, he calls her back over.
“What?” she asks. “I just wanted one more look,” he says. John Norman is a mess from the start, but we root for him because we know he sees her.
The film is rife with 1970s feminism — though Esther sings about being “queen bee” and wanting “everything,” and though she questions John Norman and demands that he fight for her, she does put up with a lot of nonsense in her quest to reform him. But the frequency with which we see her being seen is, to me, the most feminist thing about it.
Another way you know it’s the ’70s: Even though it’s about the music biz, Esther’s two backup singers are the only people of colour in the film, and its depiction of the Grammy Awards is so egregiously white it could spark its own protest.