The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

Directed by Richard Brooks. Starring Van Johnson, Elizabeth Taylor, Donna Reed, Walter Pidgeon, George Dolenz, Kurt Kasznar, Roger Moore, Sandy Descher, Eva Gabor.

Romantic melodrama is banal, sedate and unimaginative, but it glistens, so it might be enough for the undiscriminating. News journalist Johnson is in Paris at the end of the war when he garners the amorous attentions of sisters Taylor and Reed; marriage, tragedy, a daughter, wealth, and drinking follow, not necessarily in that order. The sisters are certainly photogenic, but evidence of their players’ acting abilities would have to be found in other projects, and Johnson is curiously phlegmatic when he overacts, prodded (perhaps by Richard Brooks’ hand?) to be so pathetic, pompous and unlikable in his varying moods, he’s never worth the agitated fuss. Lush photography feels sort of wasted on the phony sets seen in between cutaways to real Parisian coverage. Inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story, “Babylon Revisited”. First credited film role for a young Roger Moore (he plays Taylor’s lover during her unhappy marriage).

38/100