The Last Time I Saw Paris Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

The Last Time I Saw Paris Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson September 13, 2023

In 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald hoped to finally achieve some success in Hollywood when he wrote a screenplay titled Cosmopolitan, adapted from his short story, "Babylon Revisited." The latter appeared in The Saturday Evening Post nine years earlier when it was received with great acclaim. As Gene D. Phillips chronicles in his 1986 book, Fiction, Film and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cosmopolitan was shopped at Columbia Pictures with support from producers Lester Cowan and Budd Schulberg. But then Fitzgerald suffered a premature heart attack. (His Cosmopolitan script was not published until six decades later: Babylon Revisited: The Screenplay [Carroll & Graf, 1993].) The twins Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein (Casblanca) rewrote Fitzgerald's script. But the project languished for many years until MGM took it on in 1954 under the new title, The Last Time I Saw Paris. In Douglass K. Daniel 2011 book, Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks, it is revealed that the studio insisted Van Johnson play Charles Wills, the picture's lead protagonist. Dore Schary, the head of MGM, altered the time period of Fitzgerald's original scenario, according to Phillips and Daniel. Fitzgerald had set the story in post-World War I Paris, which including the terrible Stock Market Crash of 1929 at home. However, Schary moved it up to post-World War II Paris so it had a more upbeat tone. The Wills character was also changed from a businessman to a war correspondent who becomes a professional writer. Schary additionally wanted to appeal to filmgoing audiences by injecting a love story between Charles Wills (Van Johnson) and Helen Ellswirth (Elizabeth Taylor). My research indicates that Julius J. Epstein was very disappointed in the changes that were made from the rewrite he and his brother did, which retained several story events from Fitzgerald's script.

Several years after the war, Charles makes a return trip to Paris and Maurice's (Kurt Kasznar) café where he reminisces about meeting Helen for the first time. His friend Claude Matine (George Dolenz) introduced the two, much to the chagrin of Helen's sister, Marion (Donna Reed), who seems to cast desirous glances at Charles. Helen and Marion's socialite father James Ellswirth (Walter Pidgeon) is a free-spender with eyes on an oil deal. While he is in love with Helen, Charles is also attracted to Mr. Ellswirth's money-making opportunities and decadent lifestyle. Charles and Helen marry. It is ironic that Marion marries Charles's good friend Claude because she's always been fond of him. After working as a reporter for The Stars and Stripes, Charles quits his newspaper job to devote himself to writing novels. But when publishers reject his manuscripts, he falls into a stupor. This puts a strain on his marriage to Helen. He begins seeing recently divorced socialite Lorraine Quarl (Eva Gabor, Zsa Zsa's younger sister). Helen starts going out with Paul Lane (Roger Moore), a dashing young tennis player. This not only has repercussions for Charles and Helen's marriage, but also on the fate of their young daughter, Vicki (Sandy Descher).

Van Johnson makes a fine lead as Charles. In his 2001 biography of Johnson, Ronald L. Davis goes so far as to proclaim it the actor's finest performance. I'm unsure I would go that far. Johnson doesn't have a lot of romantic chemistry with Taylor, who sizzles in her radiant beauty. Pidgeon is funny as the Ellswirth patriarch. The script makes Marion Ellswirth too spiteful. Her character is two-dimensional. The film doesn't take advantage of Donna Reed's full range of acting gifts. Marion makes a 180° turn at the end of the third act, which is rather inconceivable given her steadfast behavior through much of the picture.

The Last Time I Saw Paris Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Warner Archives Collection's summer release of The Last Time I Saw Paris is given an MPEG-4 AVC encode on this BD-50 (disc size: 35.72 GB). The transfer is struck from a new 4K restoration from the original Technicolor camera negatives. The image looks clean while displaying a fairly thick texture and nice amount of grain. Colors on Elizabeth Taylor's wardrobes have that "pop" to them and appear very pleasing in 1080p. The film has a lot of browns and pastels. Billy Grady, who was instrumental in galvanizing Van Johnson's career, wrote in his memoirs, The Irish Peacock: The Confessions of a Legendary Talent Agent (1972), that The Last Time I Saw Paris had a major crowd scene in downtown Los Angeles on the first day of filming that included five hundred extras. LA stands in for Paris. Screenshot #s 19-20 show what resembles stock footage of the allies' victory celebration in 1945 but this was shot specifically for this MGM production. Warners has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 34916 kbps.

Thirty-two scene selections accompany the 116-minute feature.

The Last Time I Saw Paris Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Warners has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono track (1776 kbps, 24-bit). It's a little disappointing that the WAC couldn't have included a DTS-HD 4.0 Surround mix, which would have reproduced the film's 4-track stereo master in Perspecta Sound. The 2.0 monaural mix is still solid. During a Parisian amusement park scene, there's a little drop in the vocal tone of dialogue between Charles and Helen beginning at the 1:20:02 and 1:20:28 marks. Other than that scene, I didn't hear any other drop-offs. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein contribute to the Oscar-winning song, "The Last Time I Saw Paris," which is sung by Odette Myrtil.

Warners has included optional English SDH subtitles for the central feature.

The Last Time I Saw Paris Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original Theatrical Trailer (3:49, upscaled to 1080p) - MGM's official trailer for The Last Time I Saw Paris presented in about 1.33:1. The trailer is unrestored as it sports dirt and film artifacts. It introduces the primary and secondary characters.

• Classic Tom & Jerry short: Touché Pussy Cat (6:42, 1080p) - this Hanna-Barbera cartoon from 1954 appears in CinemaScope accompanied by a Dolby Digital Dual Mono mix (192 kbps). The transfer looks very clean.

The Last Time I Saw Paris Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Last Time I Saw Paris is a solid postwar melodrama with fine performances by Van Johnson, Elizabeth Taylor, Walter Pidgeon, George Dolenz, and a young Roger Moore. I believe that Donna Reed's acting gifts are underused here. Her character and the narrative each suffer to a degree. It would have been fascinating if Fitzgerald's Cosmopolitan would have been filmed as he originally wrote it. The movie is a pretty good MGM production as is. The Warner Archive Collection continue their stellar work with an unfiltered transfer taken from a 4K scan. The lossless audio is fine but could have been mixed in stereo (perhaps as an alternate track). A SOLID RECOMMENDATION.