Word: kazan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...film, even more than the novel, Stahr emerges as the only fully realized character amid a sea of Hollywood types. While retaining much of the original dialogue, Pinter and director Elia Kazan have dispensed with the device of Cecilia as narrator; instead, we see Stahr head-on, dominating the film in the same way that he dominates everyone around him. The extent of his control is partly a function of the script, but it is enhanced immeasurably by Robert DeNiro's charismatic performance. DeNiro is brilliant in the role, evoking alternately the shrewd competence and romantic vulnerability which together make...
...virtues of Fitzgerald's portrait of Stahr find their way into the filmed version, so do all the flaws of the rest of his book. One major problem is the treatment of Kathleen, Stahr's lover. Pinter and Kazan apparently took their cues from a line in the novel in which Stahr refers to Kathleen as a "Beautiful Doll." Ingrid Boulting is precisely that--a porcelain figure, heavily made-up and beautiful to look at, but seemingly ready to break at a touch. There is no real sensuality in her, none of the flesh-and-blood passion Fitzgerald probably means...
...Kazan is unable to overlay Fitzgerald's materials with any subtlety or discipline of his own. When in doubt, he resorts to all the tried-and-true cinematic devices--the soft filters, the pastel tints--to create romantic mood. At the screenwriters' ball, Stahr watches his love through the mist of a water fountain; when they walk and talk together, she is dressed in lavender and ruffles, and the scaffolding of his house-to-be is bathed in purple light...
Smitten Fascination. All these virtues can make The Last Tycoon a pleasure. They do not make it a success. Kazan and Pinter go smarmy in the romantic episodes, where Fitzgerald struggled for-and found-a saving, tough-minded detachment. Here, Kathleen is rendered with the same smitten fascination that overcame Stahr. She is played by Newcomer Ingrid Boulting (stepdaughter of British Producer Roy Boulting) with a sort of spacey spirituality that seems part Pre-Raphaelite, part post-psychedelic. Theresa Russell, who plays Brady's daughter, the proud possessor of a crush on Stahr, is around more than her role...
...most insubstantial legends of Hollywood. The movie does improve Fitzgerald's convoluted plans for ending the novel, which required a murder and a plane crash. Here, Stahr is swallowed up in the looming darkness of a sound stage. It is a lovely, but treacherously romantic image. In effect, Kazan and Pinter turn their own movie into another part of Stahr's dream. The movie is about the sad solitude that power brings, the high price of genius. These are shallow, narcissistic notions, not so much out of place as out of focus. It was Hollywood, after all, that...