"The Last Time I Saw Paris" converted the author's sensibility downward, to compassion and soap opera
The movie therefore betrayed the dry-eyed spirit of the original material
The first mistake, though, was in changing the era from the Lost Generation Twenties to post-World War II
The jazz age ambiance, recollected in the story, the mystique of Paris in the Twentiesthese key tokens of Fitzgerald's sensibility were missing
Even more damaging than the switch in era is the attempt to expand the characters whose motivations are only sketched lightly in the short story Told in flashback, the story centers on a successful American novelist (Van Johnson) who returns to Paris and a reunion with the child he left in the custody of his sister-in-law (Donna Reed), since the death of his wife...
The movie and the actors do not move the characters from point A to point B: why, for instance, do husband and wife reverse roles, she transformed from party girl to sober wife who wants to go home to America, he collapsing from serious writer to disappointed drunk
Van Johnson lacks the mythic stature to suggest other than a poor man's version of the great, doomed Fitzgerald And Liz was too young and inexperienced at the time to embody an arch-neurotic, part a malicious temptress, and part an aiding angel
The role is a cumulation of the Taylor ingénue: the goodtime flirt, cunningly stealing a man from her older sister; the spoiled daughter of a fast living phony; the irresponsible party girl with a good heart underneath it all; the sober young mother and wife; the defiant adulteress; the frail spirit cut down by the forces of nature
At each "station," she is on home ground, but the part comes out in bits and pieces rather than a coherent whole: the character, finally, does not add up It may be partly Taylor vapidity (Beverly Hills didn't prepare her for Paris), but it's also the script and the direction: that saintly woman, forgiving all, has very little connection to the blithe spirit who steals her sister's man and parties with non-stop frenzy
Even more damaging than the switch in era is the attempt to expand the characters whose motivations are only sketched lightly in the short story Told in flashback, the story centers on a successful American novelist (Van Johnson) who returns to Paris and a reunion with the child he left in the custody of his sister-in-law (Donna Reed), since the death of his wife...
The movie and the actors do not move the characters from point A to point B: why, for instance, do husband and wife reverse roles, she transformed from party girl to sober wife who wants to go home to America, he collapsing from serious writer to disappointed drunk
Van Johnson lacks the mythic stature to suggest other than a poor man's version of the great, doomed Fitzgerald And Liz was too young and inexperienced at the time to embody an arch-neurotic, part a malicious temptress, and part an aiding angel
The role is a cumulation of the Taylor ingénue: the goodtime flirt, cunningly stealing a man from her older sister; the spoiled daughter of a fast living phony; the irresponsible party girl with a good heart underneath it all; the sober young mother and wife; the defiant adulteress; the frail spirit cut down by the forces of nature
At each "station," she is on home ground, but the part comes out in bits and pieces rather than a coherent whole: the character, finally, does not add up It may be partly Taylor vapidity (Beverly Hills didn't prepare her for Paris), but it's also the script and the direction: that saintly woman, forgiving all, has very little connection to the blithe spirit who steals her sister's man and parties with non-stop frenzy