The Last Time I Saw Paris (Brooks, 1954)
My Fall Movies # 24
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[The movie is based on Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s] short story Babylon Revisited. No, that’s not about Iraq – it is a dissection of the lives of aimless, perhaps hopeless Americans lost in their own haze amidst the tumult of post-World War I Paris. Almost immediately after its initial publication back in the Roaring Twenties, producer Samuel Goldwyn scooped up the movie rights. Alas, nothing came of that. Babylon Revisited was revisited by Paramount Pictures in the 1940s, with the announced plans of William Wyler directing a film version. That, too, came to naught.
Oddly enough, the property was acquired by MGM, where Fitzgerald toiled disastrously as a screenwriter during his liquor-rich/cash-poor years in the 1930s. However, the studio decided that the original story was too dark, too sad and too dated. Thus, a new happy version of the Fitzgerald story was cranked out called The Last Time I Saw Paris.
Actually, the title makes no sense in connection to the story, which takes places almost entirely in Paris (there’s a scenic trip to Monte Carlo about two-thirds of the way into the plot). But the title made sense to moviegoers in 1954 – it was a popular, if schmaltzy, love song that pulled the heartstrings and generated smiles among those who get teary-eyed over tunes. MGM, more controversially, updated the story from the early 1920s into the post-World War II period. Clearly this was meant for audiences of the time to connect with the actions on screen – and, of course, it saved the studio a fortune on period clothing, props, set design, etc. It also enabled a continuous playing of the title song, which didn’t exist back in the 1920s.
Then came the real problem: casting the roles of the troubled, alcoholic writer and his glamorous but equally agitated wife. The first mistake came in giving the male lead to Van Johnson, MGM’s fair-haired leading man. Johnson was an adequate presence in light comedy, but complex dramatic roles were clearly not his forte and the requirements of this role (with its deep psychological anxiety and rough patches of jealousy and shame) were far beyond his abilities.
The second mistake came in casting Elizabeth Taylor as the leading lady. She had no problem meeting the role’s glamour needs, but at this stage of her career she was literally sleepwalking her way through monochromatic roles that existed solely to highlight her beauty.
But if Taylor’s acting was monochromatic, the film stock wasn’t: MGM shot the works with both Technicolor cinematography and extensive location shooting in France. If audiences were being shortchanged on substance in The Last Time I Saw Paris, at least they were getting their fix of style. (More here.)
