'A Star Is Born' was not only one of George Cukor's greatest achievements, but also his first musical and color film. The Kobal Collection

New York

What is it that makes George Cukor's films so satisfying? Throughout his half-century career, he elicited a quiet electricity from his performers and brought to the screen subtle visual elegance and an exquisite feeling for pacing and tone. His literate narratives often emphasize characters who are outsiders or rebels, men and women captivated or led astray by their imaginations. And of course many beloved stars contributed unforgettable performances, from Katharine Hepburn in their 10 collaborations to Greta Garbo in "Camille" (1936).

And yet Cukor has often been stereotyped in various ways, perhaps most often as a "woman's director" or "actor's director." A 50-film retrospective organized in collaboration with the Locarno Film Festival and opening at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center on Friday will showcase his remarkable stylistic inventiveness and exploration of genres including screwball comedies, literary adaptations, domestic dramas, noirs and musicals.

Cukor portrayed female characters with complexity and empathy, but did the same for male characters. He also had a keen instinct for casting, and many actors and actresses gave breakthrough performances in his films. When he left his native New York for Hollywood in 1929, he brought years of experience working in the theater and quickly adapted his skills to filmmaking, as evident in his sparkling comedies based on plays, including "Dinner at Eight" (1933), "Holiday" (1938), "The Women" (1939) and "The Philadelphia Story" (1940).

The Discreet Charm of George Cukor

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Dec. 13 through Jan. 7

Some critics have seen his many stage-to-screen adaptations as a weakness, but Cukor often brought plays to the screen with unusual deftness. Similarly, he thoroughly researched his literary adaptations but made them breathe with life. Although faithful to the novel, "Little Women" (1933) is as brisk as the New England air, thanks in part to Hepburn's radiant portrayal of the tomboy Jo March. It was a balm for Depression-era audiences, as was the warm, richly detailed "David Copperfield" (1935), starring W.C. Fields as Mr. Micawber.

While films like "The Philadelphia Story" have become treasured classics, others been unfairly neglected. Among the rarely screened gems in the retrospective is "A Life of Her Own" (1950), in which Lana Turner plays Lily, an unhappy young woman from Kansas who finds success in New York as a fashion model but becomes drawn into an affair with a married man. Studio meddling included making the ending more upbeat, but it remains a powerful portrayal of emotional devastation in a claustrophobic world of grit and glamour. Turner captures Lily's pained self-delusion, while Ann Dvorak is terrific as a doomed older model. Another rarity is the bittersweet, beautifully shot "Zaza" (1938), starring Claudette Colbert as an effervescent cabaret singer.

The magic of the theatrical world is a potent theme in much of Cukor's work. In the poetically eccentric " Sylvia Scarlett " (1935)—a film that has grown in stature over the years—Hepburn's heroine, disguised as a boy after fleeing France with her disreputable father, convinces their band of thieves to become traveling players. In "The Actress" (1953), based on Ruth Gordon's autobiographical play, Jean Simmons is a winsome stage-struck teen whose father, Spencer Tracy's softhearted old salt, helps her pursue her dream. Even the childish play the March sisters stage in "Little Women" celebrates creativity in life and art.

Masquerade and self-deception also riddle interpersonal relations, as in the still-gripping thriller "Gaslight" (1944), in which Ingrid Bergman's gentle opera singer submits to her deceitful husband. Many films explore false or shifting identities, such as "Two-Faced Woman" (1941), with Greta Garbo as a woman who pretends to be her twin sister, and "A Woman's Face" (1941), starring Joan Crawford as a disfigured beauty. And then there is "It Should Happen to You" (1954), shot on location in New York, with Judy Holliday as an out-of-work model who tries to buy her way into celebrity and Jack Lemmon as the filmmaker who loves her, which anticipated the rise of reality television.

"A Star Is Born" (1954) was not only one of Cukor's greatest achievements, but also his first musical and color film. With its magnificent widescreen compositions, painterly Technicolor and affecting performances by Judy Garland and James Mason, it remains one of Cukor's most haunting portrayals of the intersection between art and life. The "Rashomon"-like musical "Les Girls" (1957) is visually ravishing, and in "The Chapman Report" (1962), a flawed but fascinating drama based on a book inspired by the Kinsey Reports, he delved into symbolic color.

François Truffaut may not have given Cukor enough credit when he called him an "extraordinary" director who out of five films made a masterpiece, three that are good and one that is interesting. Cukor directed many stellar films, but one might take "Holiday" as a shining example of his artistry. This tour-de-force of graceful storytelling starring Hepburn and Cary Grant —about shedding a safe and false life for one that is playful and true—interweaves light and darkness so delicately, and uses space so fluidly and unobtrusively, that even watching it today is to regain faith in the possibilities of cinema.

Ms. Jones writes about film for the Journal.