Reviews

After reading Fitzgerald's novel, which I admit has its long passages, I can't say I enjoyed this film adaptation. Fitzgerald wanted to show the life of the super-rich in the 1920s. His characters are distant, the reader is not really supposed to sympathize with them. Whereas the movie is way more pathetic, I think. It seems like a melodrama from the 50s. The only traces we find from the roaring 20s are a few seconds of Charleston and Joan Fontaine smoking graciously with a cigarette holder. The novel was way more modern and merciless than the film adaptions a few decades later. Many episodes of suspense were left out, such as Dick being arrested and beaten up in Rome for slapping a policeman, Nicole driving off road on purpose with the whole family in the car, Dick cheating on his wife with Rosemary - and above all the dead man in the hotel, whom nobody cares about. Instead we see loads of love declarations that were not in the novel and which easily could have been left out. Too bad Billy Wilder didn't direct the picture. He might have captured the mood of the novel much better, shown all the bitterness and indifference of the characters and therefor done better justice to Fitzgerald.

I watched this film mainly because of Myrna Loy and Loretta Young. Although the storyline is rather silly and the acting seems over-emotional and trivial today, the movie still has its very own charm. It might not be a milestone in film history, but it has its funny moments, mostly unintentional, simply from the way it has been made - such as the idea of rural Hungary in the 1920s with open jewel shops in the middle of the night. But it is a true delight to watch Loretta Young and especially Myrna Loy in one of their early films. Myrna totally stole the show from the rest of the cast - even though her lines were as silly as the rest of the dialogue and her part of the gypsy girl is so stereotypical it seems sort of racist today. Still, she made the most out of it and kept me watching through the whole two hours runtime. I even felt kind of sorry that later on in her career she didn't play any sassy villains anymore. Surprisingly well done was the music score, far better than the dialogue. Perhaps they had better made it a silent picture. So if you watch this movie as one of the first talkies and don't focus on the storyline too much, you might still enjoy this old 'treasure'.