Legendary director Elia Kazan directs this Harold Pinter-scripted adaptation of an unfinished F. Scott Fitzgerald novel about a Hollywood producer Monroe Stahr (played by Robert De Niro) working himself to death.
I haven’t read the book but it would have been interesting to see how closely the film matches what F. Scott Fitzgerald intended. As it is, I liked it quite a bit, although I felt it lacked some energy. De Niro is fine in the leading role but he lacks some intensity with which he’s approached some of his earlier roles, although he still shows the journey to oblivion that the main character faces. There’s a lot going on around Monroe Stahr and we’re left to infer a lot of things about the world he inhabits just by observation. Everything is expertly staged and I especially liked the shots where he was walking through different sets (although this did lead to the problem of conversations flowing improperly, for example in one instance he was walking with a writer through one set, then it’s another landscape but the conversation is at the same point).
It actually deals with a lot of facets of human behaviour, there’s the fall from grace, obsession, unrequited love, hubris, succombing to one’s own ego and much more. I think that you’ll get out of this what you put in, and it’s one those films that will provoke different reactions depending upon how you view the world. At its most basic level it’s a film about the business of making films and it shows how it really is a business, and kind of dispels the magical aura that Hollywood is so eager to promote.
I already mentioned De Niro. Ingrid Boulting played his love interest but she was a wispy presence and played the character as if she were constantly in a daze. The only thing she offers when we’re first introduced to her is mystery but once that mystery is solved you wonder what he actually sees in her. The other main female presence was provided by Theresa Russell who was a much more dynamic and interesting character, and I wish the film had spent more time with her. The rest of the cast was rounded out by some famous names like Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis and Jack Nicholson.
The fact that the source material is an unfinished novel shows because there are places where you feel more things could have been explored, but despite that the finale is quite satisfying, although you feel it does lack an epic punch. I think had this been finished it would have been a long, grandiose epic, but it’s impossible to say whether it would have hit the mark or whether it would have been a bloated mess. As it is, The Last Tycoon is film that works on many levels and while it’s not one of De Niro’s most intense performances it does offer a lot of substance.
