Film

A Star Is Born

Name: A Star Is Born
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Released: 1976
Cast: Barbra Streisand, Kris Kristofferson, Gary Busey, Oliver Clark, Venetta Fields

Other titles called A Star Is Born: the 1937 film, the 1954 film, the 2018 film.

Streisand and Kristofferson burn through a love story caught between stardom's ascent and descent. It's a rock-era remake of a Hollywood classic, gorgeously shot, anchored by two charismatic leads at odds with the material's melodrama. For anyone who loves watching talented people self-destruct in beautiful ways, or wants to hear Streisand sing in a context that isn't a concert film.

TMDb rating

3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love grand, wounded romances where the songs carry the feeling and two careers pull in opposite directions, and you can take a lot of sorrow in a glossy package.

Skip it if you find slow, sentimental stretches hard going, or you'd rather a backstage story kept its distance from the drinking at its centre.

What it asks of you: It runs 140 minutes and lets scenes breathe, so you need patience for long musical numbers and stretches of quiet drift between them.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

A Place in the Sun1951

Another film about ambition and romance destroying the people who pursue them, with a similar tragic architecture. Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift have the same fatalistic chemistry Streisand and Kristofferson chase.

But Black and white, slower pacing, and a plot that builds toward inevitability rather than surprises. The melodrama works differently in a different era.

Crazy Heart2009

Jeff Bridges as a worn-out country singer who finds love and has to choose between it and self-destruction. It hits the same emotional register as *A Star Is Born* with less camp and more gravel.

But Less visually lush and less musically interesting. It's a smaller film about the same spiral, which some find more honest and some find less exhilarating.

The Bodyguard1992

Streisand in her second big film-star vehicle, again playing a gifted woman navigating fame and romance. Whitney Houston brings her own star power. It's a different genre but the same fascination with celebrity romance.

But The plot is a basic thriller that doesn't earn its runtime. The film knows audiences came for the music and the faces, not the story.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A Star Is Born

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Cabaret1972

Both films use music and performance to explore the gap between who you are on stage and who you are when the lights go out. Both are 1970s films made by visually ambitious directors who treat the musical numbers as windows into character, not breaks from it.

Bob Fosse's film about performance, decline, and the death of a world. Liza Minnelli is mesmerizing, and the musical numbers exist to show you the difference between the stage and reality. It's about the same machinery of fame but as formal experiment.

But It's set in Weimar Berlin and the tone moves toward darkness and historical horror. The performance style is Brechtian—it wants you to think, not just feel. Some find that detachment alienating.

A Star Is Born2018

Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper remake the material again, in contemporary Los Angeles. If you want to see the same story told with different emotional stakes, this is the most recent and stylistically assured version.

But Remaking a remake can feel redundant. Some will find this version tries too hard to feel important, and some will find the 1976 version does it better.

I'm Not There2007

Todd Haynes' essay on celebrity, artistic transformation, and the cost of fame told through six versions of Bob Dylan. It's formally inventive and genuinely moving about the machinery that consumes talented people.

But Experimental structure and no linear narrative. If you want straightforward storytelling, this fractures it deliberately and demanding.

Sunset Boulevard1950

Billy Wilder's masterpiece about fame's decline, obsession, and the people left behind when the industry discards you. Gloria Swanson is unforgettable. It's the dark blueprint for every story like *A Star Is Born*.

But It's about Hollywood, not rock and roll, and the tone is noir-gothic rather than romantic. Some find it too cynical to enjoy.

The Phantom of the Opera2004

Joel Schumacher's lush, romantic adaptation with Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum. If you loved the production design and sweeping romance of *A Star Is Born*, this has similar aesthetics and emotional excess.

But Based on stage material that some find overwrought. The music is classical rather than rock, which changes what you're meant to feel.

Licorice Pizza2021

Paul Thomas Anderson's film about ambition, romance, and the entertainment industry in the '70s. It captures the era's texture and the intoxication of pursuing something that might destroy you.

But It's deliberately meandering and doesn't have a strong plot engine. Some find it self-indulgent; some find that's exactly the point.

The Wrestler2008

Darren Aronofsky's intimate portrait of a performer past his prime trying to matter again. Mickey Rourke gives a performance of real vulnerability. It's *A Star Is Born* stripped of romance and glamour.

But It's bleak and small where *A Star Is Born* is big and romantic. Some will find it punishing rather than cathartic.

Shelter2007

Like *A Star Is Born*, it's fundamentally about whether love can survive when the world is structured to keep the lovers apart. But where *A Star Is Born* is about industry and ambition, this is about identity and secrecy. Same engine, different terrain.

A small indie about a closeted marine who falls in love while on leave. It's a love story between two men discovering themselves through each other, shot with tenderness and no melodrama. Beautiful music, real intimacy, genuine stakes.

But It's a 2007 independent film with unknown actors on a microscopic budget. The production values are humble. Some will find the emotional realism too quiet after watching Streisand and Kristofferson dominate the screen.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both films are about the cost of creating beauty. *A Star Is Born* asks whether love survives ambition. This asks whether ambition—the need to make something real and permanent—is compatible with being present in actual life. Both end with the artist alone with their creation.

Charlie Kaufman's film about a theatre director who becomes obsessed with creating a massive replica of New York inside a warehouse as his marriage and life collapse. It's surreal, formally daring, and genuinely devastating about how we perform ourselves.

But It's bewildering and abstract in ways that resist easy interpretation. Some viewers find it pretentious and deliberately obscure. It demands active work and doesn't reward passive watching.