I stopped reading Fitzgerald's novel about half way through because it was embarrassingly bad, coming as it did after his masterpiece, "The Great Gatsby," and left unedited. The film isn't much of an advance as far as plot is concerned. It's more of a character sketch than a gripping story. A man only loves two things and loses them both.
But what a cast and crew! Elia Kazan directs De Niro, Mitchum, Curtis, Moreau, Nicholson, Theresa Russell, Donald Pleasance, Ray Milland, Jeff Corey, Dana Andrews, Angelica Huston, and other familiar presences in a screenplay by Harold Pinter from a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. What a pedigree.
De Niro has never been better, not even as an Italian-American hood. He's thrown himself into the role, altering his appearance so that he's hardly recognizable -- pale, very thin, perceptive, sensitive, taciturn, blunt.
As the Thalberg figure at MGM, he loves making movies. He's as demanding with himself as he is with everyone else. He has no genuine social life until he falls in love at first sight with Ingrid Boulting. That's the second thing he loves. And after she has a brief fling with him, she ditches him to marry another man. Boulting, alas, isn't much of an actress. She has a fine figure but the overall impression she generates in the viewer is that of some kind of animated, life-sized kewpie doll. The other recognizable names in the cast don't really have much to do, while Boulting has too much screen time.
The final scene, after De Niro is fired, is pretty stylized. He repeats an earlier scene, this time speaking directly to the camera, and the last we see of him is when his figure disappears into the vast, black maw of an empty sound stage. The real Thalberg died of a heart ailment while still in his thirties. Sad.
But what a cast and crew! Elia Kazan directs De Niro, Mitchum, Curtis, Moreau, Nicholson, Theresa Russell, Donald Pleasance, Ray Milland, Jeff Corey, Dana Andrews, Angelica Huston, and other familiar presences in a screenplay by Harold Pinter from a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. What a pedigree.
De Niro has never been better, not even as an Italian-American hood. He's thrown himself into the role, altering his appearance so that he's hardly recognizable -- pale, very thin, perceptive, sensitive, taciturn, blunt.
As the Thalberg figure at MGM, he loves making movies. He's as demanding with himself as he is with everyone else. He has no genuine social life until he falls in love at first sight with Ingrid Boulting. That's the second thing he loves. And after she has a brief fling with him, she ditches him to marry another man. Boulting, alas, isn't much of an actress. She has a fine figure but the overall impression she generates in the viewer is that of some kind of animated, life-sized kewpie doll. The other recognizable names in the cast don't really have much to do, while Boulting has too much screen time.
The final scene, after De Niro is fired, is pretty stylized. He repeats an earlier scene, this time speaking directly to the camera, and the last we see of him is when his figure disappears into the vast, black maw of an empty sound stage. The real Thalberg died of a heart ailment while still in his thirties. Sad.