A brittle drama that has a hard time getting off the ground, Henry King’s Beloved Infidel tells a true Hollywood story, but it often seems as artificial and unconvincing as if these actors were playing fictional characters rather than real ones. Miscasting doesn’t help, and the film, which takes place during a two year period in the late 1930s, does a reasonably poor job denoting the era it’s representing.
Beloved Infidel (Blu-ray)
Directed by Henry King
Studio: Twilight Time (Fox)
Year: 1959
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 123 minutes
Rating: NR
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 English
Subtitles: SDH
Region: 0
MSRP: $ 29.95
Release Date: December 11, 2012
Review Date: December 4, 2012
The Film
2.5/5
When London newspaper writer Sheilah Graham (Deborah Kerr) wrangles a job from newspaper magnate John Wheeler (Philip Ober) as a Hollywood gossip columnist, she quickly makes some enemies in Tinsel Town. Attempting to soften her caustic writing style, she bumps into disaffected and alcoholic novelist-now-Hollywood screenwriter F. Scott Fitzgerald (Gregory Peck) at one of the studios, and it’s love at first sight. Graham’s writing has sold a lot of newspapers and has even landed her a weekly radio series, but her ascending star does nothing for the morale of Fitzgerald who is no good at writing screenplays but needs an income in order to keep his troubled wife Zelda in a comfortable sanitarium and his daughter in private school. With Graham paying on the rental of a Malibu beach house so he can have quiet, he begins writing a new novel about the Hollywood studio system, but when his first few chapters are rejected by two magazines, he goes on an enormous bender that not only drives a wedge between his relationship with Sheilah but also seriously affects his already fragile health.
Sy Bartlett’s script based on Sheilah Graham’s memoir about her tumultuous affair with the (then) forgotten Fitzgerald attempts to turn their saga into an epic love story for the ages, but it just never gets off the ground. Graham’s reputation as one of the most acerbic and unforgiving of the Hollywood columnists seems to be dealt with truthfully at the beginning (they even go into her very humble beginnings and the fabrication of her persona to win that job) but is whitewashed more and more as the film runs turning her into a martyr and a saint. For those who don’t understand that Fitzgerald was the most popular writer of the 1920s only to be abandoned and completely ignored in less than a decade, the film doesn’t really give an adequate amount of background on his calamitous rise and fall thus making the Fitzgerald in the movie seem a spoiled child who drinks when things don’t go his way. Director Henry King does use his wide Cinemascope screen to capture some marvelous ocean vistas during the Malibu sequences, and he often stages dialogue scenes with the actors occupying portions of the frame’s sides rather than always plopping them squarely in the middle. There are also some neat touches such as slyly showing the shelves in Graham’s home filling with books as Fitzgerald educates the girl who had only an elementary school education. He’s much less successful capturing the busy atmosphere of 1930s Hollywood where many of the names are fictionalized (we do hear Gable and Garbo mentioned, but the rest don’t seem like real people they’re dealing with) and people’s clothes and attitudes seem more modern than the 1930s. There’s an anachronism at the film’s end with the couple attending a screening of That Night in Rio at Fox on the night of Scott’s fatal heart attack. That film didn’t open until the next year; the film in question was actually This Thing Called Love.
Gregory Peck is dreadfully miscast as the F. Scott Fitzgerald in the final year or two of his life. He doesn’t appear the least bit the haunted, tortured soul that we’ve always read about but instead a merry (though sometimes irritating) drunk on the couple of occasions when things don’t go his way: when he’s fired from a studio and when his opening chapters of The Last Tycoon are rejected. His characterization never rings true: we just don’t buy him as a poetic writer or a brash wit or a frail shell of the man Fitzgerald once was. Deborah Kerr has an equally difficult task in making the disliked, bristly Sheilah Graham a movie heroine. She pulls it off with her great talent, but her loss at the end doesn’t seem as much a tragedy as a relief and a release, and the film’s ending is never as affecting as was the obvious intention. Reliable Eddie Albert plays Fitzgerald’s ingratiating friend Bob Carter, and Philip Ober has a good moment or two as Graham’s mentor.
Video Quality
4/5
The film’s Cinemascope aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is faithfully delivered in a 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. Sharpness is really excellent throughout with generous amounts of details in facial features, clothes, and settings easily seen. Color saturation levels are very controlled with appealing and realistic flesh tones. Black levels are very good throughout. There are some small speckles on occasion and a splotch or two at random moments, but most of the image is superb apart from ordinary looking stock footage used on occasion. The film has been divided into 12 chapters.
Audio Quality
4/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 sound mix is very much typical of its era with a generous spread across the front soundstage of the glorious Franz Waxman score and various sound effects and with the surround channel catching some spillover in both score and sonic effects. Dialogue is directionalized across the front channels and has been recorded superlatively. There is a touch of low hiss here and there but nothing that distracts from the movie’s aural impact.
Special Features
2.5/5
An isolated score track featuring Franz Waxman’s beautiful music for the movie is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo.
The film’s trailer is presented in 480i and runs 2 ¼ minutes.
The enclosed 6-page booklet features a generous selection of stills from the movie, poster art on the back cover, and film historian Julie Kirgo’s appreciative essay on the movie.
In Conclusion
2.5/5 (not an average)
Beloved Infidel is a biographical drama that just doesn’t quite ring true nor does it greatly engage its audience. The production is luscious, the stars are appealing despite some miscasting, and the quality of Twilight Time’s Blu-ray disc is all one could wish. Only 3,000 copies of this lush melodrama are available, so those interested in purchasing a copy can contact www.screenarchives.com to see if copies are still available. They're also available via Facebook at www.facebook.com/twilighttimemovies.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
