Le Dernier Nabab

After reading the book (and Fitzgerald's notes about how he saw the story progressing) I expected high quality from Kazan's film treatment. Much has been made of his decision to have an almost comatose Monroe Stahr, unable to express emotion on anything but movies, and in this I think he partly succeeded. But the film as a whole irritates me. It's one I've gone back to several times and I can't work out why it has that effect. It just does. In relation to the book, some scenes are pretty much verbatim, some are added to, some are ditched altogether, there just seems no reasoning behind it. The plusses - it has an interesting ending and an equally interesting supporting cast of old timers, most of whom are always worth watching. It has a certain amount of style and character of its own. It's just not that easy to enjoy, IMO.

Whether or not "The Last Tycoon" is a great movie or not, it's a must-see for folks like me who love classic Hollywood. Think about it...the film features the talents of folks like Robert Mitchum, Robert De Niro, Ray Milland, Jeanne Moreau, John Carradine, Tony Curtis, Dana Andrews and Jack Nicholson ALL in the same film! And, this doesn't include all the famous supporting actors such as Jeff Corey, Seymour Cassel, Theresa Russell, Peter Strauss and more!! Wow...what an amazing cast director Elia Kazan had on hand for this picture.

The story was inspired by an unfinished story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's a story that seems to have been inspired by various real Hollywood folks...though it's very highly fictionalized. The main character, Monroe Stahr (De Niro), is the most closely like a real Hollywood icon, Irving Thalberg....and he is the 'tycoon' from the title. And, throughout the film, Stahr burns the candle at both ends....working non-stop like Thalberg and a man who seemingly has the Midas touch. But, in many, many other ways he and Thalberg are very much different...so much so that it's obviously not meant as a biography of the man. It's more like a jumping off point....with a character reminiscent of Thalberg at the beginning but much unlike him as the story progresses.

So is it any good? Yes...but also disappointing. With such a great cast and director, I really expected more. At times, the film felt episodic and the ending certainly felt incomplete. But I would also add that some of the performances were amazingly muted...to the point where I think the film could have used an infusion of energy and life. Too many times, De Niro and, later, his love interest, simply seemed half asleep and this did detract from the story. Overall, very much a mixed bag...worth seeing but quite uneven.

What a mystery THE LAST TYCOON has been. This is a large-scale film with perhaps the greatest cast of male actors in history and nary a mention is made of it. Most critics bash it, the common viewer may dismiss it, but you cannot deny its place in history. It is not often you will find such a pool of talent AND a movie with both Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson on screen together. They even FIGHT! By the way, THE LAST TYCOON also happens to be an excellent, if flawed, work of art.

Director Elia Kazan (GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT, ON THE WATERFRONT) and company have taken F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel about the politics and personal conflicts of 1930's Hollywood and put forth an off-beat, unusual picture. Kazan is one of only three directors to successfully direct motion pictures between the 1940's on through the 1970's (the other 2 being Hitchcock and Huston). A staggeringly legendary cast play their parts effectively instead of just calling in their performances, which easily could have happened. Perhaps there was some competition between the old school actors and their methods (Mitchum, Milland, Andrews, Curtis, Pleasence to name a few) and the "method" actors like De Niro or Nicholson who symbolically take the torch in this film. This is especially true of De Niro's extraordinary lead as "Monroe Stahr" (based on Irving Thalberg). Kazan helped to create the "method" acting concept, so who better to direct such a crossroad of talent.

"Monroe Stahr" is a no nonsense "Studio Chief" who I'm sure Fitzgerald encountered while a hack writer in Hollywood during his final years. De Niro as "Stahr" orders cuts here and fires directors there and caters to what he thinks audiences want. He is actually a noble character, something Fitzgerald may not have meant to express. He must deal with Robert Mitchum and Ray Milland, who represent the corporate, artless side of the picture business and later the writer's wing (represented by Mr. Nicholson). As expected, there are many conflicts of interest but the movie's magic lies in the amazing contrast Kazan and company make between the dream world of an old black and white movie and what happened when the director yelled "CUT".

I love classic black and white films and one of the aspects that made them so great was the world you were thrust into. Fake backdrops, miniatures, and grand sets surrounded the actors in most of them, but the dream-like quality of a black and white film kept you involved. With this film, some curiously familiar "fictional" film clips are used for screening purposes where the studio executives would clap or claw at what was projected (They were filmed specifically for this film). Kazan and co. create scenes from supposed films (one was CASABLANCA turned inside out) to add some realism to it all. We get to see an actor from the movies-within-the-movie "on" and "off-screen". Tony Curtis has some good early scenes as a perfect screen presence, but an awfully inept star "off-screen" when he meets with De Niro to confess his sexual confusion in real life. You'll know what I mean if you see the flick for yourself.

LAST TYCOON is a love story more than anything. Many people may dismiss the love angle as a distraction. I found it slightly hypnotic and mysterious. The love interest, played by a beautiful actress named Ingrid Boulting, is great at exuding an elusive quality, something the De Niro character can't put his finger on. It all leads up to a somewhat vague climax and ending, but perhaps the filmmakers were unable to come up with the final stamp Fitzgerald failed to accomplish himself.

This is a film for discerning and patient film-goers only. It is unlike anything I have ever seen before. That is why I see movies. Why the film has been so looked over is bizarre. Even if you consider it a complete flop, it deserves recognition, if only for the great cast. If you like classic films and know a thing or two about film history, you may know why THE LAST TYCOON is so captivating.

RATING: 8 1/2 of 10

This movie is worth watching for Theresa Russell alone.Ok the rest of the cast are all very good but a heart rending role from Theresa Russell steals the film,you can see her mind working and her face is a picture in every sense.At the start of her career to be in a scene with De niro and Nicholson and walk away with it,is something worth watching.A very moving and affecting work by an actress in a worthwhile film.

Fitzgerald's unfinished novel about the romantic yearnings of an Irving Thalberg-like mogul (Robert DeNiro) is turned into the screenwriter Harold Pinter's stock in trade: a sphinxlike ballet of omitted information. The mixture of Pinter's ellipsis-strewn dialogue rhythms and the coarseness of the Old Hollywood setting gives the picture a strange, detached mood--cryptic, teasing, vaguely dislikable. DeNiro would nail this sewed-up-kingpin character two decades later in Scorsese's CASINO; here, whether through youthful inexperience or Pinter's deletions, he's remote and untantalizing. The punch of Fitzgerald's story--the hyperefficient chief's destruction through a search for the love he never found--never lands, because Pinter has drawn the character as a pinched, uncommunicative stick who seems to have no inner life. (It doesn't help that the director, Elia Kazan, seems unsure if he wants to communicate that DeNiro's love interest, Ingrid Boulting, is either a vapid lump or a pornographic doll.) Pinter designs most of the scenes to have anti-payoffs; in one--DeNiro's counsel to a panicky, impotent movie star (Tony Curtis)--he seems to have carefully tailored a joke with no punchline. With Theresa Russell, who gives the best performance as the Big Boss' daughter, and Jack Nicholson, in one of his finest tiny-role performances as a strangely fastidious union organizer. Also with Robert Mitchum, Ray Milland, Donald Pleasence, Seymour Cassel, Jeff Corey, and an extremely young, haunted-looking Anjelica Huston.