Judy Garland @ 100: "I Could Go On Singing"

Team Experience revisited nine Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here's Nick Taylor on her final film.

Judy’s last film was always going to be an event. Released six years before her death to positive reviews but poor box office, I Could Go On Singing plays like a morbid echo of her final months. But for all the film’s metatextual readings into Garland’s life and career, this isn’t a self-conscious reckoning or farewell from a beloved star to her audience. Her regular talk of staging yet another comeback, even after her brief and very publically heralded casting in Valley of the Dolls before being canned by the studio, gives I Could Go On Singing an aura of lost time and unrealized potential heavier than the film’s bittersweet ending implies. I Could Go On Singing leaves Garland as alone as she’s ever been but still singing with all her heart, and it’s a shame she never got to strut it for the camera again...

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Judy Garland @ 100: "Judgment at Nuremberg"

Team Experience is revisiting nine Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here's Christopher James on the star's second Oscar nomination.

Judy Garland received a Supporting Actress nomination in 1961 for her three scene performance in "Judgment at Nuremberg."

With a career that spanned over three decades, there were many points in which Judy Garland had to reinvent her image, intentionally or unintentionally. The other articles in this centennial celebration have examined Judy as the child star, the musical superstar and the complicated movie star. In conjunction with Claudio’s piece on A Star is Born, this later period of Garland’s career sought to deflect from her personal life through focusing on her powerful dramatic chops. Stanley Kramer’s Judgment in Nuremberg cast Garland in a new light… a supporting actress. However, her role as Irene Hoffman, a woman imprisoned as a teen for violating “racial pollution” law, is not short on fireworks. Garland delivers an impressive and affecting performance in just three short scenes. It's hard to argue against that year's winner (Rita Moreno for West Side Story), but Garland more than earns her Oscar nomination, the second and final of her career...

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Judy Garland @ 100: "A Star Is Born"

Team Experience is revisiting nine Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here's Cláudio Alves on the star's first Oscar nomination.

A Star Is Born is Hollywood's favorite legend about itself, a mythic middle point between propaganda and self-critique filmed four different times from the 1930s to the 2010s. Five, if one considers George Cukor's What Price Hollywood? since that was likely the basis for the '37 version. Though flexible, the story remains mostly unchanged throughout its interpretations. Norman Maine, an alcoholic star on the decline, meets Esther Blodgett and immediately falls in love, with the woman and her undeniable talent. Opening doors for her in the entertainment industry, he watches as she's rebaptized Vicki Lester and rises to the top, far surpassing him. After their wedding and an awards night, whereupon Norman ruins Vicki's moment, she considers giving up her career to take care of him. Realizing this, he kills himself, intent on saving his beloved from his downfall. 

Though every A Star Is Born has its merits, the 1954 musical tends to be the consensus pick for the best iteration in no small part due to Judy Garland's performance in the titular role…

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Judy Garland @ 100: “The Wizard of Oz”

Team Experience is revisiting a dozen Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here’s Brent Calderwood to kick us off...

The Wizard of Oz is more than an insanely watchable film—it’s a gateway to a lifelong appreciation of Judy Garland.

“It was a place. And you and you and you and you were there.” Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale took us along with her to Oz, and we believed. It was more than the glorious art direction—head-high hibiscus, an acre of artificial poppies, and real birds in the forest including cranes and a peacock. It was Judy Garland’s performance. No, not her performance—it was Garland inhabiting Dorothy. The then sixteen-year-old became a nine-year-old girl. This woman-child made us feel her vulnerability, and revealed a heart as big as a farmhouse. (One of my personal favorite moments is when Dorothy is trapped in the Wicked Witch’s castle, trembling with fear, and Toto escapes. “He got away! He got away!” she cries, with real tears of joy and empathy for her terrier streaming down her cheeks amid the terror.) ...

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Hou Hsiao-Hsien @75: New Millennium (2001-2022)

The conclusion of a four part series by Cláudio Alves

In the cinema of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the 21st century started with a neon dream. The camera follows Shu Qi's Vicky as she runs through a Taipei tunnel, lights flickering above. Everything happens in slow-motion, flickers turn into waves and the actress's movement makes a strange unnatural dance. She looks back at us, hair flying in a cloud of black tendrils, her eyes asking us to follow her down the tunnel, like Alice down the rabbit hole. It's a hypnotic sight, made more seductive by the music of Lim Giong, house beats and techno dronings that transform the screen into a pulsing heart.

2001's Millennium Mambo fulfills the formalistic promise of Daughter of the Nile, transcending Goodbye South, Goodbye's tethering to material truth. Like its protagonist, the film looks back at its director's history while moving forward to an unknown future. It's the start of a new chapter for Hou Hsiao-Hsien…

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