The Last Time I Saw Paris

The Last Time I Saw Paris was the second of two films that Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson co-starred. What a difference in four years from The Big Hangover where Johnson was billed ahead of Taylor.

Which is odd in this case because the film is really about Johnson. It's based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, Babylon Revisited which takes place in Paris after World War I. MGM apparently thinking that the audience would be more amenable to a story taking place after World War II, so the plot was updated for France of the Fourth Republic.

It doesn't quite work though, France of that era was a whole lot different than France of the Roaring Twenties. They partied then also when Paris was liberated and the Germans chased out of their country, but on the whole it was a time for more sober reflection of what France's role in the post war world would be. The Roaring Twenties that Fitzgerald wrote about were not the Roaring Forties.

Van Johnson is a GI who comes upon a family of expatriates who lived in Paris right through the occupation. Walter Pidgeon and his two daughters, Donna Reed and Elizabeth Taylor. They both are interested, but Johnson has eyes only for Liz. And the film is their story.

It's a tragic story, you can see Fitzgerald himself in Van Johnson, the would be writer who becomes a dissolute playboy. Partying right along with him is Taylor who is the image of Fitzgerald's party girl wife Zelda.

MGM did this one on the cheap. There are some shots of Paris, but on the whole the Paris you see is the Paris that was created by the studio for their classic musical An American in Paris. View the films side by side and you'll have no doubt.

Look for Eva Gabor as a divorcée who likes Johnson and a very young Roger Moore as a tennis pro who'd like to be a kept man by Taylor.

It's a nice story, but it could have been a whole lot better if MGM had actually shot the film in Paris completely and really set in the period it was written.