Tender Is the Night (1962)

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I had wanted to see this version for many years, as I love the novel, but I didn't expect it to be very good--and my expectations were met! The actors are fine, but the screenplay tampered with Fitzgerald's story in both major and minor ways, and didn't make it better. It's not really worth giving spoilers, but I'll just say that the movie is worth seeing if you just want to satisfy your curiosity, as I did. A much more faithful and better-quality adaptation is the 1985 Showtime miniseries, but I'm not sure if it's available anywhere. Regarding that version, I thought Mary Steenburgen, an actress I generally love, was miscast as Nicole, but Peter Strauss (as Dick) and the rest of the cast were very good. BTW, since I'm a Fitzgerald junkie, I'll share some background: Fitzgerald created Dick and Nicole as an amalgam of two couples: his friends Gerald and Sara Murphy, wealthy American expatriates in France; and himself and Zelda. The Divers' glamour, wealth, and charisma derive from Gerald and Sara, their neuroses from Scott and Zelda. (BTW, Zelda was not a millionairess, as one reviewer said--her family in Alabama was comfortably middle-class, not in the millionaire category.)

Under the firm hand of Henry King, known in his time as one of the best translators of literature into film, F.Scott Fitzerald's "Tender Is the Night" reaches its conclusion as a solid but rather cold drama. Produced with the usual ornaments of any Fox motion picture of those years, the shooting in real and colorful European locations and the vast CinemaScope compositions seem to go in opposite direction to the intimate drama with four key characters: a psychiatrist (Jason Robards), his patient and wife (Jennifer Jones), his old and wise mentor (Paul Lukas) and his rich sister-in-law (Joan Fontaine). Around them there are a frustrated composer (a very obnoxious character played by Tom Ewell, that guarantees that the title song is played endlessly), a starlet (Jill St. John), a wealthy Roman with nothing to do (Cesare Danova), and other characters that advance or retard the plot. There is not a single close-up in the film to get us close to those faces, not as a voyeuristic act to see their pores, wrinkles or grimaces, but as a most useful syntactic resource of cinema language. Everything is seen from a distance, with extreme prudence, aggravated by the fact that the film extends to 2 hours and 22 minutes that screenwriter Ivan Moffat should have prevented, or editor William Reynolds could have reduced. Maybe in a film house with a huge screen it worked better. After "Tender Is the Night" and 50 years in the film industry, Henry King retired from cinema.

**spoiler alert**This movie does not have the greatest reputation in the world. I'd read that Jennifer Jones was too old to play Nicole, that she overacts, that she has no chemistry with Jason Robards, that it was too long, etc.Well don't believe it!It DID take me several attempts to watch the whole thing, but that nothing to do with the movie, that had to do with something else. WhenI finally saw the whole thing all the way through, I enjoyed it very much and questioned why it does not have more admirers.It explores many themes, thoughtfully and without exploitation. Should a doctor romance his patient? When does the patient stop being a patient, exactly, and start being a person? Nicole meets Dick in a sanitarium. She's there for a variety of reasons, none of which sister Joan Fontaine really care to discuss. It has something to do with their father. Nicole eventually is released and runs into Dick years later, and they get married. They have a wonderful life and two children but it starts to fall apart. Not because of Nicole's mental state - actually, as it turns out, she becomes the stable one. But a friend of theirs (Tom Ewell, making a fool of himself as a chronic drunk) dies, their daughter almost dies from alcohol poisoning, and Dick is see with an actress (Jill St. John) at a brawl in a café and their picture makes all the front pages.Jennifer Jones is prone to be very mannered. In spite of them she's still a favorite, but here she's really very good, she's not too old to play the part, and her chemistry with Robards is believable. Fontaine doesn't do much but enjoy her own wardrobe. As I mentioned, Ewell is a drunk but his death scene (or, rather, the circumstances surrounding it) are the worse thing in the movie. Jill St. John is first seen as a youngster but she matures as the movie progresses..unfortunately, her acting does not improve. At over 2 1/2 hours, its an investment, but worth your time. Now I want to watch it again. 8/10.

This movie was a flop at the time and has been pretty much forgotten, which is a shame. It's a faithful adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald's moving story which is a touch lifeless, but still worthwhile.The plot is ofcourse very good, a love story which is intriguing and very sad. There is perhaps not quite enough emotion throughout most of the film, but by the time the end comes the film has become pretty moving. Jason Robards was definately miscast as Dick Dyver [a good name for a porn star!]but Jennifer Jones shows what a good actress she sometimes could be ,especially when she is displaying her character's 'madness' ,if that's not too strong a word. None of the supporting characters are as interesting as they should be except Jill St John's aspiring actress and there is somehow little feel for the period, but the strength of the story just about carries one through. Mention should be made of Bernard Herrmann's often touching [if a bit self derivative!]music, but having the film's theme song [which he did not write] played endlessly on the piano by one character gets a bit annoying.Despite it's flaws ,this is a fairly solid romantic drama that probably seemed old fashioned even in 1962, but deserves some reappraisal.