Teary but effective melodrama on the long side.
The Production: 3/5
Richard Brooks’ The Last Time I Saw Paris takes full advantage of Elizabeth Taylor’s blossoming physical appearance and dramatic skills. Always lovely, the actress radiates charisma in every frame superseding the treacly melodrama she’s acting in with warmth and a devil-may-care ebullience that she didn’t have much opportunity to show during her MGM years. A strong cast of beautiful people compliment the heavy dramatics, but it really is the top-billed Taylor who emerges from the film as its true star.
On V-E Day in Paris, Stars and Stripes reporter Charles Wills (Van Johnson) is introduced to the entire Ellswirth family. Oldest daughter Marion (Donna Reed) already knows and loves him, and happy-go-lucky wastrel father James (Walter Pidgeon) is always looking for a handout, but once he’s introduced to Marion’s younger sister Helen (Elizabeth Taylor), he forgets everything else and seeks her hand in marriage. James would rather his daughters marry wealthy men, but he doesn’t stand in the way of their happiness, and they marry. The couple struggles along together with Charles’ paltry salary working for the Europa News Service while gamely writing novel after novel on his off time trying to sell one and make their fortune. Then, out of the blue, one of the family’s long-owned oil wells finally strikes it big, and Charles no longer feels tied down to his job. Having money, however, also kills his ambition as he begins enjoying the Parisian nightlife with too much wine and with an especially attractive divorcee Lorraine Quarl (Eva Gabor) taking him away from his wife and their young daughter Vicki (Sandy Descher).
The screenplay by Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein and director Richard Brooks is a loose, modernized adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story “Babylon Revisited.” The postwar ebullience doesn’t quite equate with the crazy Roaring ‘20s where Fitzgerald’s story was situated, but the film takes its time (possibly too long) establishing the devil-may-care family attitudes and how the bill for their larkishness eventually comes due. Richard Brooks drags out the film’s second half when Charles abandons his writing career and turns playboy and Helen assumes the sober responsibilities of raising their daughter, and the film’s determination to yank tears from the audience’s eyes becomes just a trifle too obvious, Helen’s tragic circumstances foreshadowed early on by coming down with the flu after getting drenched in a Paris rainstorm. The Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II Oscar-winning song which gives the film its name makes a lovely, melancholy theme for the movie, but its endless repetition during the film eventually becomes a bit tedious. While there are some real Paris locations shown in the movie, you’ll recognize a couple of striking sets (the Seine walkway, a twisting Paris street) as sets used extensively in MGM’s An American in Paris filmed in Hollywood three years earlier.
Besides Elizabeth Taylor’s dazzling looks and strong characterization (she even seems to mature during the film, something that can’t be said for any of her co-stars), Van Johnson’s Charles offers him one of his strongest roles though too much of his performance leans to the morose, self-pitying, alcoholic side that earns audience scorn rather than sympathy. He does have a tour-de-force moment playing both sides of an argument he steels himself for (that never happens), and his desperation and longing at the film’s climax is moving and among the best things he ever did on-screen. Walter Pidgeon seems to be having a blast as a scalawag always on the make and the take, and both Eva Gabor and Roger Moore as adulterous objects of Charles and Helen’s affections play to type. Donna Reed as the older sister isn’t given a lot to do through much of the movie but stand on the sidelines and look hurt and annoyed, but her bitterness is given one scene near the end to vent her frustration, and she takes full advantage of it. George Dolenz as her warm-hearted husband is quietly effective. Sandy Descher is the sweet, obedient daughter Vicki, while Kurt Kasznar is wasted as a bartender who observes the Willis family’s ups and downs.
Video: 5/5
3D Rating: NA
The film’s original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.75:1 is faithfully rendered in this 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. Sharpness and clarity are paramount here: Van Johnson’s freckles have never been so pronounced, and the amount of details in hair, clothes, and furnishings is quite impressive. The Technicolor is lush and very appealing with realistic skin tones and eye colors very prominent throughout. The movie has been divided into 32 chapters.
Audio: 5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 sound mix is strong. Shame on Warner engineers for getting our hopes up with the main title in lush, full-bodied stereo, but the remainder of the film is in strong but a bit anticlimactic mono. Dialogue has been well-recorded and has been mixed with the background score and appropriate sound effects astutely. There are no age-related problems with hiss, crackle, pops, and flutter.
Special Features: 2/5
Touché Pussycat (3:49: HD): a Tom and Jerry cartoon in Cinemascope.
Theatrical Trailer (3:49, HD)
Overall: 3/5
Richard Brooks’ The Last Time I Saw Paris offers great acting opportunities for top-billed stars Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson, and they make the most of them in this effective if unbalanced melodrama. The new Warner Archive Blu-ray rescues the film from the public domain with a beautiful video and audio presentation that negates all past releases of the film.
The Last Time I Saw Paris [Blu-Ray]
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Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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