Music is essentially 12 notes between any octave - 12 notes and the octave repeats, Sam Elliott's gruff industry veteran advises Ally (Lady Gaga), A Star Is Born's young singer on the rise. "It's the same story told over and over, forever. All any artist can offer this world is how they see those 12 notes. That's it."
This isn't just a neat summing-up of an entire art form: it's also a nifty rationale for the existence of this fourth version, and third remake, of Hollywood's archetypal rise-and-fall romance.
The first, directed by William A Wellman and starring Janet Gaynor and Frederic March, came out in 1937, and was repurposed as a musical in 1951 by George Cukor, with Judy Garland and James Mason as the dewy ingenue and dwindling matinee idol whose professional trajectories bisect as their love-lives converge.
The 1976 take, starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristoffersen, moved from the film world to the music business - and it's there, on spotlit stages and in hushed recording studios, in which the 2018 version also unfolds. But happily, director Bradley Cooper has taken his own script's advice to put a personal spin on those 12 notes.
The story of A Star Is Born may be as old as show business, but it is also electrifyingly fresh - a well-known melody given vivid, searching new force.
In addition to making his by-any-measure extraordinary directorial debut here, Cooper co-stars as Jackson Maine, a country music superstar whose career seems to be cresting as the film begins. After a swig of vodka and a handful of pills, he strides on stage and plays a crunchy blues rock number to a capacity crowd, and in the fervour it's hard to tell where the wailing of his guitar stops and the audience's screaming starts.
Afterwards he unwinds in a secluded dive bar - a drag bar, in fact - and watches Lady Gaga's Ally, a waitress moonlighting as a cabaret singer, croon La Vie en Rose, against an intoxicating, ruby red backdrop. His face lights up with a mix of admiration and desire: he wants to see this young woman in his bed, but also wants to see her thrive.
WATCH | The trailer for A Star Is Born..