Babylon Revisited & The Last Time I Saw Paris
The 2022 Fitzgerald Festival will show the film THe Last Time I Saw Paris, American Technicolor romantic drama made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1954. It is loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Babylon Revisited."
"One of the finest short stories in the English language, 'Babylon Revisited’, written by F Scott Fitzgerald after the Great Crash, is an intensely personal portrait of a man who has squandered his life. It’s also a perfect tale for the times we live in." Sarah Churchwell
About
As World War II ends in Europe, with Stars and Stripes journalist Charles Wills is on the streets of Paris, covering the celebrations. He suddenly is grabbed by a beautiful woman, who kisses him and disappears...
A comment on the movie:
"Where Fitzgerald did it in a few words—in a few subtle phrases that evoked a reckless era of golden dissipation toward the end of the Twenties' boom—Richard Brooks, who directed this picture after polishing up an Epstein-brothers' script, has done it in a nigh two-hour assembly of bistro balderdash and lush, romantic scenes."
The Story
"Babylon Revisited" is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, written in 1930 and first published on February 21, 1931 in the Saturday Evening Post.
The story is set in the year after the stock market crash of 1929, just after what Fitzgerald called the Jazz Age. Brief flashbacks take place in the Jazz Age. Also it shows several references to the Great Depression and how the character had to adapt his life to it. Much of it is based on the author's own experiences.
The film starred Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson in his last role for MGM, with Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor, Kurt Kasznar, George Dolenz, Sandy Descher, Odette,
