To judge solely from the films (the ones he was paid to write*/the ones adapted from his work), you’d think Hollywood had it in for F. Scott Fitzgerald. And maybe they did. This big, misconceived M-G-M production is typical. Long out of copyright and available only on subfusc Public Domain copies, it turns out after restoration to be a slick, expensive looking job. Especially in the extensive French location work from D.P. Joseph Ruttenberg. But that’s as far as the quality goes. Moved from the original short story ('Hollywood Babylon') POV of how the hedonistic late ‘20s bled into the sobering ‘30s, we now begin as WWII is ending (about a half decade after Fitzgerald’s death) as a family of happy scam artists begin to fall apart when they actually become wealthy. Perpetually glum ‘Stars & Stripes’ reporter Van Johnson meets ex-pat society sisters Elizabeth Taylor & Donna Reed, along with their Micawber of a father Walter Pidgeon and Reed takes it badly when Johnson goes ga-ga for La Liz. Alas, these two lovers can’t settle in to that big inheritance after Johnson fails & fails & fails to write the Great American Novel . . . from Paris. Wealth takes away his ambition and apparently Liz’s health as she runs around in the rain with Roger Moore’s Euro-trash gigolo. You know where this is going, and not only because the film is told in flashback. Taylor is by turns gorgeous and blobby looking, as if her face had no bone structure. Reed gets the worst of it, and Johnson, as mentioned runs the gamut from glum to glummer. Director Richard Brooks would do better by Taylor in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF/’‘58, but the rest of the cast were all beginning slow fades toward supporting roles and series tv.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *In spite of many attempts, Fitzgerald had only one credited screenplay, but it was a good one: THREE COMRADES/’38. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/three-comrades-1938.html
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