You won't be disappointed!

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Just perfect...

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In other romance films, Robert De Niro acted in, he was more communicative more open and someone more understood. This film portrays his as very subdued very private. I personally didn't like the way he acted in this film. The ending was also no ending. I was disappointed.His love making with Ingrid Boulting was without feeling without emotion and caring. It was a pure physical love not based on anything substantial and ever lasting.I got the impression that this film was filmed as a psychological story more than a romance movie. I understand that it was a film based on a true story, but the ending was sad and had no ending. SEE RANK

The Last Tycoon, Elia Kazan's swan song based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's final, unfinished novel of the same name, is an important work of cinematic art. The Last Tycoon can be approached in different ways depending purely on the viewer's taste and his level of understanding.First, at its most basic level, it is a film about films and people who make them: writers, directors, actors, producers and studio bosses, not in the increasing order of their creative importance but in terms of their actual influence as prevalent during the Golden Age of Hollywood.Second way to approach it is to look upon it as a tale of unrequited love. Third, as a film about the fall of a man from omnipotence to oblivion. Fourth, The Last Tycoon is about the inflated human ego and the Lear-like grand operatic collapse it so often triggers. Fifth and the most complex way to approach it would be as a surrealistic expression of an artist working at the height of his powers and desperate to make the most of the final few opportunities left with him.The Last Tycoon features quite a few memorable performances including cameos from Tony Curtis, Jeanne Moreau and Jack Nicholson. The film revolves around a Hollywood movie producer, named Monroe Stahr, slowly working himself to death. Robert De Niro is absolutely breathtaking to watch as Stahr—a role fashioned upon Irving Thalberg, the production chief at MGM during the late '20s and '30s. The scenes that he shares with Jack Nicholson—the only ones that the two legendary actors ever shared on the celluloid—are pure gold. De Niro shares great chemistry with the two female leads who complement him really well. While Ingrid Boulting is delectable to watch in her enigmatic portrayal of Kathleen Moore, Theresa Russell creates a strong impact in the limited screen time she gets. The Last Tycoon, as underrated as it is, deserves much more attention than what it has received over the last four decades. The movie succeeds in breaking the glittery image of the Tinsel Town, which is often portrayed as some kind of a Shangri-La for the young and upcoming artists, by presenting a caricature that's far more realistic. The movie may lack the refinement of a work of commercial art but its unfinished crudeness definitely makes it more lifelike. It's a movie that hasn't lost its relevance with time and perhaps that's what makes it a timeless gem of cinema. The restless viewers can afford to stay put, but those with patience must check it out, for they would be thoroughly rewarded.For more, please visit my film blogsite:http://www.apotpourriofvestiges.com/

If I recall correctly, this was the last movie to be directed by Elia Kazan, who had an illustrious career in American show business as an acclaimed stage writer and director on Broadway as well as a successful Hollywood director. 'The Last Tycoon' was meant to be his swan song, of sorts. I saw this movie at the cinema when it was first released in 1976 with an old boyfriend and I don't think that either of us knew what to make of it. I then read the novel by Scott Fitzgerald. It was Fitzgerald's last notable work, noted most of all because he died before he could complete it. Comparisons to 'The Great Gatsby' are sadly inevitable, and I didn't find 'The Last Tycoon' to be as good. (But what book ever is?) I hired the movie on rental many years later and thought it was stilted and too impressed by its original source material and couldn't understand why I might have recalled something so (un)memorable.Anyway, the story concerns the rise and fall of Monroe Stahr, a movie mogul whom Fitzgerald based upon the legendary Hollywood figure of Irving G Thalberg. The usual Hollywood generic characters make a showing, the gruff studio head, minions looking to get ahead etc, played by some famous names in miniscule parts (ie Dana Andrews, Tony Curtis), as if it was a mark of status to take part in Kazan's last project for the screen. Robert de Niro looking very young, I think was miscast by Kazan to play Stahr; his performance is strictly one-note and not very lively. A young ingénue making her film debut, Ingrid Boulting, who plays a woman that Stahr becomes obsessed with, got the thumbs down from audiences and critics for being too beautiful to act, whilst a feisty turn from Angelica Huston before she became well known, got a lion's share of the attention. Robert Mitchum, and Ray Milland also have supporting parts but like Andrews and Curtis, it seems a waste of time - dare I say it, a gimmick of casting, to have them in the film at all.Theresa Russell appears as Robert Mitchum's daughter, and she is the Nick Carraway of this story, observing the tragic predicaments of those around her and vowing that she has learned something about life's pitfalls, from carefully observing the mistakes Monroe Stahr and others in the story have made. Since the original source material was never finished, I actually cannot remember the kind of ending they had to tack onto 'The Last Tycoon'. I think Stahr, after his unhappy love affair leaves the studio never to return. In reality, Thalberg was in ill-health for most of his life and died young after being married to actress Norma Shearer - his Hollywood reputation is legendary but you would never know why after not knowing anything about him, and then watching this film.This is one of those films that one finds difficult to get involved with as you cannot see the point of why it has been made. In this case it is unfortunate because the project had everything going for it, but it did not turn out as well as either audiences or critics had anticipated, and sadly comes off as an unnecessary vanity project on behalf of Kazan reaching the sunset of his illustrious career in movies.

For a little while as I watched the Last Tycoon, I thought I could understand what the critics said of this film when it first came out (the majority of them I mean). The screenplay, written by Harold Pinter from what is supposedly a much richer (albeit incomplete) text from F. Scott Fitzgerald, stages many scenes like how one would see on a theater stage, with only one or two little directional differences with Elia Kazan's take on the material. This, plus its slightly 'dry' style (i.e. very little musical score, limited camera movement, performances kept without much, if at all, improvisation), makes things seem almost too much in the realm of the naturalistic, of drama kept to a minimum of interaction.But as the film went along like this, I started to notice something: the sort of coldness, almost a loneliness, with the character of Monroe Stahr, is what actually makes a lot of the movie work for all its intents and purposes. It has the veneer of being a little distanced, of not having the full driving force of drama and comedy (although it does have both of those in bits and pieces, more as little familial or romantic drama or one-line throwaways) like an 8 1/2 or the Player with dealing in the problems of a professional in the film industry. But because of Stahr's method of practices, of being as Mitchum's character describes "like a priest or a rabbi, 'this is how it will be'", when he's told 'no' it shatters him. As a film about loss, and the very calculated realization that his code in business spills over into the personal, the Last Tycoon does work.Maybe not very well, but work it does, as storytelling and as a character piece. Sure, it might not be De Niro's best, but he does deliver subtle like it's as second nature as breathing (kind of a twist on his other 1976 character, Travis Bickle, whom he played subtle but also crazy, where as here it's subtle and empty), and he's got plenty of backup. There was some critical flack for the actress Ingrid Boutling, playing the nearly obscure object of Monroe's desire-cum-demand, but she too is better than she was given credit for, at least within the range she's allowed to work in (which, granted, isn't as much as one might think, but she's seen not as a fully-fleshed person but as someone with hints of a reality she needs and a fantasy world of movies she doesn't).Then there's Nicholson, showing up in the final reels for a couple of amazing scenes sparring with De Niro, barely ever raising voices for a low-key one-on-one as a movie exec and communist writer organizer. Not to forget Mitchum, in maybe his last good performance, and Theresa Russell in also an underrated turn as a woman grown up way past her years. Did I mention Jeanne Moreau? She's Moreau, that's about it, playing a completely self-absorbed star for all its one dimension is worth. Only Tony Curtis, with his libido problems isn't par for the course, and Donald Pleasance has a shaky (if darkly funny) scene as a scorned writer.Does the Last Tycoon have some problems as feeling like compelling historical drama? Sure. But does it somehow get into the atmosphere of its character in the context of his profession, revealing all that's absent for him every day coming home to his Asian butler? Absolutely. It's a mix and match that will disappoint some, and for those who want to take the chance on a somewhat forgotten 70s film- Kazan's last and Spiegel's final ego-tickler- might be even more impressed than I was. 7.5/10