The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954 film)

I like it. They made quite a long film out of a short story.

Sandy Descher who played the daughter is still alive.

The movie hinges on Liz and Van having sexual chemistry. Fail.

R3, why fail?

They don't have any chemistry. Van just isn't an effective romantic lead.

I've always loved this movie. And Van's scene with his daughter at the end is heartbreaking.

What does everyone think of Elizabeth's hair in this movie?

R2, wow. Didn't know that

R5 I agree. ... Van may have been more convincing if Peter Lawford had been cast in Liz Taylor's role.

R9, true

This movie was made right before Liz made "Giant". MGM had her playing the lovely young lady who smart and free. But it's plain that Liz is bored. Van Johnson was never a leading man. And Donna Reed is wasted - as she usually is in movies- although she is the only one with an Oscar. Walter Pidgeon is perfectly cast. Outside of a few Greer Garson films Walter is not a leading man. The Technicolor seems washed out. And life in Paris is nothing like Kelly's in 1951 or Gigi's in 1958. This a Paris of drunks, girls, and soldiers. And it's not well done. Also Van Johnson wants his daughter back and only Donna Reed has that power? Courts- even in Paris they have courts of law. Too long for too little in return.

OP - The last time you saw Paris was in 1954- That’s a long time. You must be really old by now.

There's a scene where Eva Gabor pounces on Van Johnson, while Elizabeth Taylor and Roger Moore look on. I don't think those four sharing the screen was on anyone's Bingo card.

I wonder why it was never officially released on DVD and Blu-ray.

Or VHS.

The bad quality versions don't count.

R14 - I believe because the studio screwed up the copyright. The movie was released in 1954 but the person who put the date in Roman numerals put the date as 1944 on the print. They lost 10 years of copyright. and it expired. It entered the public domain in 1974.

R14 Blu-Ray Release occurred July 2023 by Warner Archive Collection.

You've probably all seen gorgeous young Liz publicizing this film when she appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line? in 1954. A very rare opportunity for her to show how genuinely and naturally funny she could be. I think she was pregnant with one of her Michael Wilding sons at the time but that 1950s swing coat she wears may be more a 1950s fashion fad than a maternity top.

When her identity was guessed, Bennett Cerf pompously asked her why the name of the film was changed from the F. Scott Fitzgerald source material. Liz drily replied that MGM was worried audiences would think Babylon Revisited might be a Biblical epic.

Someone should find the clip and link it! Sorry, I'm feeble and unable.

R17 Here ya go.

Love this picture:

I honestly think she looks more beautiful in this film (at least before she cuts her hair) than any other.

Yeah, I wish that she would have kept her hair long throughout the entire movie.

It's actually a wig though in the first half of the movie.

At least they evened it out in the movie...the short hair does not appear until exactly in the second half.

Is this one of those MGM films that's set in the 1920s but looks hopelessly like the 1950s when it was made?

Does Liz bob her hair because she's a flapper?

R22 No. The film changes the era from the original story, and it's supposed to be right as WW2 is ending. That is what's shown in OP's trailer when the crowd is celebrating in the streets of Paris, and we see exuberant Liz pull Van into a kiss with him hoping that the uniformed soldier standing behind her would soon do the same.

How many years does the story span in the movie?

R24 Something like 9-10 years.

It starts in 1944. The daughter, Vickie, is born in 1946, and she's said to be 8-years old at the end.

Was this filmed in actual 3 strip Technicolor?

I just can’t bring myself to watch any Van Johnson pictures

Except The Human Comedy, but he’s not a lead in that.

Van should be a DL icon, if only for being openly & notoriously homosexual …ahead of his time.

It is a visual pleasing film

It's always in the bargain bins. I've tried to watch it several times but never finished. Van Johnson can't act.

There was never a time Elizabeth Taylor was not beautiful. Even as a child in National Velvet, she was gorgeous.

R31, when did she look her best to you?

You just can imagine LB Mayer and the MGM execs drooling with anticipation, waiting for baby Elizabeth Taylor to grow up.

R33, probably

I love this movie and had to get it on DVD because it's letterboxed and fuzzy everytime it shows up on TCM or another public channel. Haunting story, it was effective in showing what the mood was like after WW2 and how people had to adjust to different lives.

It was an OK movie. I say that as someone who bought a DVD of it in the dollar bin. Liz was never prettier. The casting of the male lead was way off. They should have had Roger Moore as the male lead. Van was just all wrong.

Why did MGM bother to secure the rights to Babylon Revisited if it was going to be all about post-WWII lives?

It's the same story, they just shifted it by a couple of decades.

[quote]It is a visual pleasing film

Young Roger Moore is certainly beautiful. Liz and a Gabor also provide eye candy.

Van Johnson was gorgeous. I don't know why his looks are so underrated.

By the 1950s, this was the kind of middle brow tripe that MGM was producing while Paramount, Warner Bros. Fox and even Columbia were securing the best screenwriters and most interesting and controversial source material. MGM was still stuck with a 1930s schmaltzy aesthetic that no longer clicked with changing audiences after WWII.

R37 The screen rights for Babylon Revisited had been purchased from Fitzgerald by Lester Cowan for $1000. Cowan had been trying to bring it to the screen for years with a screenplay first written by Fitzgerald himself that was called "Cosmopolitan." Cowan finally gave up on the one by Fitzgerald wrote and hired the Oscar-winning Epstein twins to write a screenplay that he was then able to sell to MGM for $40,000.

Also, this interesting rundown of how the story finally made it to the screen says it was the MGM front office that wanted the film to take place post WW2 rather than the original era:

[quote] But then the front office went on to make the ill-advised decision to update the setting of the story from post-World War I Paris to post-World War II Paris, on the assumption that contemporary audiences could relate more readily to a film set in the recent past than to one set in the more distant past. Brooks, who discussed with me his adaptations of literature to the screen, did not agree with this decision, which was made before he was assigned to direct the picture; he firmly believed that since Fitzgerald's story was to some extent a requiem for the Roaring Twenties, the period setting was indigenous to the story as Fitzgerald had conceived it. But he was overruled.