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filmsLast Tycoon’ - worth seeing“the Last Tycoon*'; (PG), with Robert D* Niro, fngfid Bonlllng, Jack Nicholson and Robert Mitch-ttrfi, directed by Ella Karan, at the Palms Theater.By MIKE PETRYNIThere are scenes In The Last Tycoon that arc pored In subtle characterization. R makes “Network'’ by omparlson look like a yell session.Th« characters in “The Last Tycoon”: Robert De firo’s enigmatic tycoon, Ingrid Boulting’s wafting, :tbereal dream girl, Jeanne Moreau’s apparently ickled but finally stunning actress, Robert Mitcham's md Ray Milland's sly businessmen. Jack Nicholson's ynical Communist and Tony Curtis’ comically impo-ent male sex symbol. These characters creep into your nind and stay there. Each acting nuance continues to everberate. Each person can appear on screen, not aylng anything, and you know exactly who they are.Entertainment briefsTORONTO (UPI)—Veronica Tennant, principal dancer dth the National Ballet of Canada, will not be able to terform as scheduled during the spring season.Miss Tennant, who Is presently recovering from surg-ry for a tom ligament, is not expected to return to the ompany before May.PANAMA CITY, Panama (UPI) - The historic old allroad station in this city has been converted into ’anama’s new Museum of Anthropology.The two-story, neo-classical style building was once be terminus for the world's first transcontinental railway.NEW YORK - Caroline McWilliams has been award-d the 1376 Bayfield Award for her performance asfariann In Mh» Nihv York Khakesnnnrp Festivnl nrn-IT'R ALMOST enough to excuse them for not saying anything.Screenwrifer Harold Pinter, despite being so fine a playwright, has taken a long look at F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel on which the movie is based, and gotten so confused he had to drop back to ‘‘The Great Gatsby” to find a main character—De Niro’s Monroe Stahr—then ignored the Gatsby enigma enough to pump up “The Last Tycoon's” own love affair with Miss Boulting for commercial value and fleshed out the rest with long pauses in the dialogue.Consequently. “The Last Tycoon” has become a strange mixture of two Fitzgerald novels, running at a deathly pausing pace, without getting a grip on the hard-nosed mixture of commercialism and art that Fitzgerald intended Stallr to be. Director Elia Kazan has been stuck to playing the subtleties to get any merit out of the story. However, Pinter's off the hook a hit because Kazan plays those subtleties so well and makes the big scenes hypnotic, particularly one in which Slahr explains making pictures” to a disgru-lled writer. lt;Donald Plcasanee), in what has to be one of the most self-castigating characterizations Fitzgerald ever did of himself.THE STORY, WHICH Fitzgerald based loosely on Irving Thai berg, is broken down here into two parts. One deals with Stahr’s machinations as the “genius” of Hollywood studio heads, his mixed coddling of and contempt for the writers, his board room surprises and his innate sense of what the public wants and how it’s delivered. The second deals with his love affair with a woman (Miss Boulting) who resembles his first wife and lost love, an affair rendered here as idyllic, mysterious, touching and ultimately hopeless.if there were not. so much drudgery, and if Pinter bad sensed the quiet dynamics at the Stahr's base, “The Last Tycoon,” with its massed talents, could have been a real gem, a classy haunting look at a world gone now but not forgotten.Still, with some of its gently subtle moments and its magnificent performances “The Last Tycoon remains a movie worth seeing, especially in the case of De Niro since Ibis, in a year when he’s nominated for Best Actor in Taxi Driver,” may become his forgotten great performance.
Newspaper Details
Phoenix Arizona Republic
Phoenix, Arizona, US
Sat, Mar 05, 1977
Page 118
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 23 Sep 2020
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