I went into this one not expecting much, and I wasn't disappointed. Basically you have a pleasingly low-key performance by Van Johnson as a hard-working American G.I. who decides to stay in Paris, under the spell of a lovely bohemian (Liz Taylor) and her anti-pragmatic father (Walter Pidgeon), but his performance eventually veers too deeply into the maudlin as we're expected to believe that his inability to write a successful novel has brought about an existential crisis for the protagonist as well as a marriage crisis for the couple.
The most irritating thing about the movie is the way that the writers tried so hard to make sure that the audience wouldn't blame either of the lovers for any of the bad things that are happening, all the while expecting us to buy that each lover blames the other at least at one point or another. That makes me suspect more than anything that some radical changes must have been made to F. Scott Fitzgerald's original story.
It's even hard to say if the film has any visual beauty to compensate for the lack of believable characters, at least on the DVD I saw (where it was coupled with "Father's Little Dividend") the colors were very faded and there were visible scratch lines and so forth indicating that this DVD was made from a print and not a negative. So I couldn't possibly take away or add any credit to the film because of photography because it's very hard to judge the quality of the images. However I found the directing in general to be good with regards to the actors' performances but pretty nondescript in terms of visual sensibilities.
The most irritating thing about the movie is the way that the writers tried so hard to make sure that the audience wouldn't blame either of the lovers for any of the bad things that are happening, all the while expecting us to buy that each lover blames the other at least at one point or another. That makes me suspect more than anything that some radical changes must have been made to F. Scott Fitzgerald's original story.
It's even hard to say if the film has any visual beauty to compensate for the lack of believable characters, at least on the DVD I saw (where it was coupled with "Father's Little Dividend") the colors were very faded and there were visible scratch lines and so forth indicating that this DVD was made from a print and not a negative. So I couldn't possibly take away or add any credit to the film because of photography because it's very hard to judge the quality of the images. However I found the directing in general to be good with regards to the actors' performances but pretty nondescript in terms of visual sensibilities.