The Last Tycoon (1976)

No need to recap the plot. The first part in the studio featuring old time film actors and developing story had me thinking really good movie. Then the story hit a dead stop with a romance about as interesting as watching proverbial grass grow. And after watching De Niro deadpan his way through two whole hours, I roused myself with a big dose of Hopalong Cassidy. Now some folks may think that names like Kazan, Pinter, and De Niro can do no wrong. But, in my little book, they made a real snoozer out of melodramatic material that 1952's unapologetic The Bad And The Beautiful did up right. I'm just sorry the great director Kazan went out on a parade of meaningless close-ups and a sterile central performance-- a long, long way from his better work. Fortunately, Russell and Nicholson add some spark to the flattened result. I only hope proved performers like Milland and Andrews were well paid for their wasted cameo appearances. I realize that the production was constrained by its real life subject, Irving Thalberg. In fact, the head of MGM Production may indeed have been a pensive undemonstrative man. But stressing that on screen doesn't help. Why not a shot or two of his having fun or showing some anger. Something to engage with. Of course, I may have missed some hidden subtleties and symbolism, his unfinished house, for example . Trouble is it's hard to seek out subtleties without that engagement. There's a lesson here, I think. Something about not confusing big names with big results. Fortunately, De Niro's career went on to show what he could really do.

Then here's your chance! I continued watching this movie to see if it continued to be as bad as the early scenes were. It was. Awkward dialog was rampant throughout the film. De Niro -- an actor I highly respect -- was wooden. The plot...once you figured out that it had one...meandered along. Elia Kazan was a great director, with the emphasis being on "was". He was beginning to lose his touch, and although he had some nice cinematic shots, the story stumbled along.If you're wondering if I didn't find anything good about the movie...well, it's a very lavish production. visually, the film looks great.Among the other actors, Tony Curtis was fine as a star with tremendous insecurities. Robert Mitchum and Ray Milland were fine as studio executives, though some of their dialog was questionable. Jeanne Moreau...a great actress...in other films. Jack Nicholson was interesting in a smaller role. Donald Pleasence was good as a misplaced screen writer. It was good to see Dana Andrews (as a floundering director), Peter Strauss, and John Carradine (as an old tour guide).This film had potential, but Elia Kazan flubbed it. It's never good when you watch a film to see just how bad it is.

Fitzgerald died while working on "The Love of the Last Tycoon". It was finished by Edmund Wilson, who took a disjointed series of chapters and paragraphs and a lot of notes and make a coherent novel out of it: "The Last Tycoon." Thus, the script of this film does not have a canonical story to adapt. With this leeway, a lot more could have been done. This film is betrayed by an incoherent script and uneven direction. The movie can be as slow as molasses pouring out in the Alaskan winter or so fast that major events whirl past the viewer. I saw it when it was first released and I left the theater feeling as if I had been cheated.The performances are not the problem. Some performances are great. Theresa Russell is uncanny as a bright college student. DeNiro and Nicholson shine, and Angelica Huston is intriguing in a small role. The problem is that many scenes play out-or peter out-to nothing. No point is made, the story is not advanced. For example, there is a famous Hollywood story of an underling who suffered a heart attack in an executive screening room, and rather than call for help, he remained silent so as to not disturb his bosses. He died. In this movie, he is discovered dead. No point is made. Later, like Teresa Russell, we wait with high expectations to hear the exchange between DeNiro and Nicholson vis-a-vis a writers strike. The gist of their conflict is never even touched on and the scene ends in a silly way.The basic plot is that the tycoon is brought down by his love for a NO NO YES MAYBE NO MAYBE GOODBYE woman. She is meant to be a mysterious cauldron of seething conflicting emotions. Instead, this character comes across as rather a fool who believes anything a man tells her, as long as the man is not DeNiro. Thus, he is not a tragic hero, destroyed by love, but rather a bewildered jerk. There is great stuff here. DeNiro instructing a British writer on the techniques of movie making. Teresa Russell in all her scenes and a satiric take on romantic movies with Tony Curtis and Jeanne Moreau. However, ultimately, there is great potential which goes unfulfilled.

For a little while as I watched the Last Tycoon, I thought I could understand what the critics said of this film when it first came out (the majority of them I mean). The screenplay, written by Harold Pinter from what is supposedly a much richer (albeit incomplete) text from F. Scott Fitzgerald, stages many scenes like how one would see on a theater stage, with only one or two little directional differences with Elia Kazan's take on the material. This, plus its slightly 'dry' style (i.e. very little musical score, limited camera movement, performances kept without much, if at all, improvisation), makes things seem almost too much in the realm of the naturalistic, of drama kept to a minimum of interaction.But as the film went along like this, I started to notice something: the sort of coldness, almost a loneliness, with the character of Monroe Stahr, is what actually makes a lot of the movie work for all its intents and purposes. It has the veneer of being a little distanced, of not having the full driving force of drama and comedy (although it does have both of those in bits and pieces, more as little familial or romantic drama or one-line throwaways) like an 8 1/2 or the Player with dealing in the problems of a professional in the film industry. But because of Stahr's method of practices, of being as Mitchum's character describes "like a priest or a rabbi, 'this is how it will be'", when he's told 'no' it shatters him. As a film about loss, and the very calculated realization that his code in business spills over into the personal, the Last Tycoon does work.Maybe not very well, but work it does, as storytelling and as a character piece. Sure, it might not be De Niro's best, but he does deliver subtle like it's as second nature as breathing (kind of a twist on his other 1976 character, Travis Bickle, whom he played subtle but also crazy, where as here it's subtle and empty), and he's got plenty of backup. There was some critical flack for the actress Ingrid Boutling, playing the nearly obscure object of Monroe's desire-cum-demand, but she too is better than she was given credit for, at least within the range she's allowed to work in (which, granted, isn't as much as one might think, but she's seen not as a fully-fleshed person but as someone with hints of a reality she needs and a fantasy world of movies she doesn't).Then there's Nicholson, showing up in the final reels for a couple of amazing scenes sparring with De Niro, barely ever raising voices for a low-key one-on-one as a movie exec and communist writer organizer. Not to forget Mitchum, in maybe his last good performance, and Theresa Russell in also an underrated turn as a woman grown up way past her years. Did I mention Jeanne Moreau? She's Moreau, that's about it, playing a completely self-absorbed star for all its one dimension is worth. Only Tony Curtis, with his libido problems isn't par for the course, and Donald Pleasance has a shaky (if darkly funny) scene as a scorned writer.Does the Last Tycoon have some problems as feeling like compelling historical drama? Sure. But does it somehow get into the atmosphere of its character in the context of his profession, revealing all that's absent for him every day coming home to his Asian butler? Absolutely. It's a mix and match that will disappoint some, and for those who want to take the chance on a somewhat forgotten 70s film- Kazan's last and Spiegel's final ego-tickler- might be even more impressed than I was. 7.5/10