What Price Hollywood?

Often misjudged as a dress rehearsal for his famed 1954 adaptation of A Star Is Born, What Price Hollywood? is a drastically different beast – a demystification of the Hollywood myth that is far grittier and less sentimental than the Judy Garland musical. Constance Bennett plays a waitress who gets skyrocketed to stardom after a chance encounter with Lowell Sherman’s alcoholic director. Inevitable heartbreak ensues as the new-born star becomes disillusioned with Hollywood. Neither an outright condemnation of movie culture nor a romanticization of Tinseltown, What Price Hollywood? offers a rare, clinical look at Hollywood, rendering it as an industrial machine, a corporate juggernaut, rather than a factory of dreams. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)