The Star

... because the plot is about an aging actress in an industry that worships youth who can no longer get parts of any kind, whose friends have abandoned her, and who is so broke she is about to be kicked out of her small apartment - Bette Davis as Margaret Elliot. I guess I'd also mention that her star has fallen so far that she can't even get arrested in this town (Hollywood), but alas she can, as she gets arrested for driving drunk and getting into a one car accident, all while lugging her Oscar around.

Jim Johannsen (Sterling Hayden) bails her out of jail. He does this partly because she gave him a break in his very short movie career before he moved on to a boat building business of his own, partly because he is kind, partly because he is still in love with her although he is noticeably younger than she is. She actually does get a shot at another part - a supporting role playing the part of the much older sister of the actual lead actress. The test was just a formality, but Margaret messes it up by trying to play the middle aged scrub woman role she has as sexy rather than disheveled and dispirited as directed. When she asks to see her screen test she sees how ridiculous it looks and, as a result, has an epiphany. You'll have to watch and find out just what that epiphany is.

This film is supposedly based loosely on the late career of Joan Crawford, although she got parts - and good ones - past the date of the release of this film. Not to be unkind, but Joan Crawford aged quite well where here, Bette Davis actually looks every day of her 44 years. It's interesting to see Sterling Hayden play a strong yet sensitive guy. There is a good role here for Natalie Wood as Davis' adoring teen daughter.

One thing that the film ignores, probably because it had been written several years before, is that by 1952 actors and actresses whose stars were no longer on the ascent or who maybe were never that well known in the first place were getting steady work on television. In fact, both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford started getting regular appearances on television starting in the 1950s.

Watching The Star I wondered how close to him it all was for Davis. There's a scene in the end where it gets meta and you can almost see Davis as Margaret hearing the script storyline that she is offered. Regardless, this is a fine film and it has Davis working with her usual spark and unlikeable presence. But like always, she knows how to make you root for her. I also think the running time, while seems short, is pretty much the perfect length for the story the film is trying to tell. This is a problem I thought Mr. Skeffington had, way too long for its own good. So yeah, if you want to seek out all of Davis this is still a fine entry and a required one really.

Davis (in an Oscar-nominated performance) plays Margaret Elliot as washed out has been actress. She was big once but now can't get a job. She's divorced and penniless but refuses to give up hope for one more acting job. She also has a man who loves her (Sterling Hayden) and is trying to get her to face reality. There's also a scene or two of Margaret with her daughter played by an impossibly young Natalie Wood.

It's a depressing movie of course but you can't stop watching. It's short (89 minutes) and moves quickly. It does have a ridiculously false but happy ending that had me getting misty-eyed. This is worth seeing for Davis alone. She's just great. She also gleefully said she modeled her character after Joan Crawford! OUCH!

This is Bette Davis in all her tempestuous, splendid fury and indignation. As Oscar-winning actress Margaret Elliot, she is now given the go by from her own studio in favor of younger Hollywood fillies like Barbara Lawrence who is thrown at the viewer like a new car off the assembly line.

Margaret Elliot is down to cases,bankrupt, with no prospects and is suffering the ignominy of seeing her former household possessions being sold on the auction block to satisfy her creditors,with rock bottom bids at that. Even her relatives are still putting the bite on her for monthly touches she can no longer provide, resulting in an explosive scene which only Miss Davis could deliver.

One of the most searing moments occurs when Margaret takes her "Oscar"(even more unsettling knowing that statuette is,indeed, one of Miss Davis's Best Actress awards) on a drunken odyssey through residential Hollywood. Behind the wheel,she grazes fenders, screams like a wounded banshee at motorists who happen to be driving on the same road as she is and lashes out verbally in front of the house where Barbara Lawrence resides. Her subsequent incarceration for DUI is as demoralizing as the clearly visible toilet inside the cell photographed in publicity stills.

'The Star' has a seedy look to it, which is desirable for this flick as we get a glimpse of Hollywood's underbelly during the early 1950's. One can almost imagine rows of palm trees rooted in used coffee cans with the scent of chicory mixed with cigarette butts. Even Miss Davis's wardrobe is downright frumpy, straight off the Woolworth's rack. Only when she does her screen test for an possible bit part in a movie does she try to project herself as a sexy tart with disastrous results.

The only jarring note to this movie is the appearance of Natalie Wood as Margaret Elliot's teenage daughter. She is bubbling with youthful enthusiasm, quite startling against this cynical, world weary backdrop. Sterling Hayden provides the obligatory beefcake and an ample shoulder for Margaret to cry on.

'The Star' radiates like the hood ornament on the Cadillac Margaret Elliot drives on approval before the studio dashes her dreams yet again and the repo man chases after yet another falling 'Star'.

Rate this *** out of **** stars.

Another movie where the director does not matter much.It's the actress who makes the movie.And when the actress is none other than Bette Davis ,the pleasure is intense.

Although not as good as "Sunset Boulevard" ,which it often recalls,"the star" is a solid absorbing melodrama.Davis was one of the few actresses who had the guts to play her "days to come" ;it was even more stunning in Aldrich "Whatever happened to Baby Jane?" during the following decade.And deservedly,Davis never really grew old-fashioned ,in 1981,she had even a song dedicated to her eyes.

"The star" has two great moments.The first one happens when Davis is walking down the street and when relics of her heyday are sold by auction:going,going,gone!;the second one when she watches her test and cries over the dismal results.Davis was so gifted an actress she could "play badly" and remain fascinating: the test was her last fight to regain a youth which eluded her.As Holden told to Swanson in Wilder's opus:"Being fifty is nothing tragic when you do not pretend you are thirty".