The Last Tycoon

The Last Tycoon

The Last Tycoon
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DVD details

Actor: Jack Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau, Robert De Niro, Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis
Brand: DE NIRO,ROBERT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 123 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-11-18
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Paramount

DVD Reviews of The Last Tycoon

DVD Review: An Enigmatic and Reclusive Cinema Giant
Summary: 3 Stars

Monroe Stahr is a high-powered Hollywood executive seen as a creative genius by his studio peers. What makes him so different from so many executive screen depictions is that he is not the boisterously expansive "eat on the run" giant one so frequently sees, but is more of an otherwise faceless bureaucrat who says little and acts only when it is necessary.

"The Last Tycoon" was director Elia Kazan's last film. The 1976 drama was adapted from the final work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's friend John O'Hara and others of the literary cognoscenti believed it would be his enduring work, but alas, before he could complete it he succumbed to a fatal heart attack in his apartment at the Laurel Arms in Hollywood, located next door to the Garden of Allah, the author's favorite Southern California residence, but one that was beyond his means at that point of a problem plagued career.

The difficulty with a work of this kind that ends before the creator had an opportunity to instill a deft finishing touch is that so much is left to the imagination as we abound in a sea of speculation. Celebrated British playwright and screen scenarist Harold Pinter entered the picture and applied his efforts to provide a conclusion. He focuses on the enigmatic and impossible to reach elements of Monroe Stahr, who was drawn in real life by Fitzgerald from his days as an MGM screenwriter, when he knew and observed Irving Thalberg. Like Fitzgerald, Thalberg was a product of New York intellectual circles. Both soared like comet while still in their twenties. They both also died tragically young. Fitzgerald's heart problems brought about his death at 44. Thalberg, never blessed with a strong constitution, succumbed at 37 from pneumonia.

Robert DeNiro, then a hot young talent who had recently dazzled in "Taxi Driver," played the cards dealt him with professional skill as the enigmatic Monroe Stahr. It is difficult to internalize a driving dynamo that keeps so much of his emotion pent up within him, as was the character's persona. Robert Michum does his usual superb job, this time as the studio head that tries to understand DeNiro, but is ultimately as perplexed as anyone else. So is his spoiled daughter played by Theresa Russell. On her vacation time from an impressive Eastern college she seeks to seduce DeNiro, but her passes fall consistently incomplete.

Instead DeNiro expends his outward passions, but even then in his normal distant style, on Ingrid Boulting, who is engaged to an architect who spends much of his time out of Los Angeles. On one of those occasions, when she is visiting the studio as a tourist, DeNiro sees her and is awestruck at the resemblance between her and his deceased former movie star wife, whose tragedy he cannot put behind him. Boulting's friend Anjelica Houston runs interference and hopes to attract the movie executive's romantic attention, but she cannot help but fail. Whereas she is direct and extroverted, DeNiro is cut from the same cloth as her girlfriend Boulting, with both being taciturn enigmas.

The tempest waiting to erupt within DeNiro ultimately explodes when Mitchum assigns his troubleshooter to talk to New Yorker Jack Nicholson, who has come to Hollywood to unionize writers. Mitchum disgustedly refers to Nicholson as a Communist agitator, normal terminology from studio executives seeing union organizers as threats to their tightly run power bases.

When it is DeNiro who ultimately loses his poise by getting drunk and being unable to tend to business at the time that Mitchum needs him to be in top form the studio boss, along with the chief legal representative from the New York office, played with executive efficiency by Ray Milland, believe it is time for DeNiro to take a long and badly needed rest.

In a film that is replete with big names Tony Curtis excels in his role as a frightened leading man who has developed impotence. He goes to DeNiro and tells him his story, looking for help. The irony is that seeking assistance from the highly troubled DeNiro is like the legendary case of "the blind leading the blind."
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Description of The Last Tycoon

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD
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