SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

filippaberry84 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.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Blake Rivera If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Putzberger Reason # 1 - Lousy casting. "The Last Time I Saw Paris" is an expansion of F Scott Fitzgerald's elegiac short story "Babylon Revisited," a lightly fictionalized depiction of the aftermath of Fitzgerald's marriage to Zelda. If MGM stretching a melancholy, intimate portrait of a flawed man into a feature-length romantic extravaganza was a bad idea, casting Van Johnson as the Fitzgerald character was a worse one. Charles Wills, the Fitzgerald stand-in, is a journalist who marries a beautiful but impulsive debutante in Paris right after World War II, lapses into drunken self-loathing after writing a few failed novels, and wastes his wife's inheritance on the way to becoming a puffy, alcoholic playboy. Johnson is certainly believable as a spineless gigolo, but he's too light in his loafers to play an angry husband and too light in the head to play a brilliant, tortured artist. Plus, he was in his late thirties by the time all this celluloid was wasted, so his celebrated boyish good looks were turning flabby. Thus, there's no reason Charles would attract two hot prospects like Liz Taylor and Donna Reed, the expatriate sisters who fight for the pudgy pretty boy's love in post- WWII Paris. Liz wins, of course, and while she's not bad as Wills' erratic wife Helen, she didn't have the acting chops to connect her character's wild, fountain-swimming side and hurt, vulnerable, wronged- wife side. At least she's having a lot more fun than poor Donna Reed, another beautiful actress hagged up to make Liz Taylor even prettier (I don't think Shelley Winters ever forgave George Stevens for frowzing her up in "A Place in the Sun"). The normally effervescent Miss Reed is asked to play Helen's repressed, embittered sister, and just in case she didn't get the hint that her character was emotionally distant, the studio decided to style and costume her like a constipated schoolmarm. Why MGM would waste an Oscar-winning knockout like Reed on such a drab, thankless role indicates some discombobulated priorities. Veteran actor Walter Pidgeon, as Liz and Donna's penniless bon vivant father, manages to project the necessary seedy charm, but since that's all he has to do, his near-constant presence makes him a well-manicured bore. Compounding the absurdity is Zsa Zsa Gabor, who by 1954 already looked like she'd just emerged from her seventh face-lift, wandering on screen as a wealthy socialite who has a tryst with Charles (why not just cast a drag queen - - it's Van Johnson, after all!). Van and Liz also manage to conceive a daughter, the most saccharine movie child this side of a Disney flick. The whole thing is a mess.Reason # 2 - Profligacy. Thousands of extras wander across the MGM soundstages intended to replicate post-WWII Paris. What could have been a sad, intimate portrait of two flawed people in love becomes an overlong Technicolor extravaganza of crowd scenes, party scenes, racetrack scenes, and one Monte Carlo Grand Prix auto race just to impede character development. At one point, the MGM costume department puts Johnson in a harlequin costume. The point?

Cathie Browne One of the screens enduring story's of love sorrow and joy. of the post WWII era and it's aftermath on those who lived it. Charles (Van Johnson) returns to Paris to reminisce about the life he led in Paris after it was liberated. He worked on "Stars and Stripes" when he met Marion (Donna Reed) and Helen (Elizabeth Taylor). He would marry Helen and at first be happy staying in Paris after his discharge and working for a news organization. He would try to write his great novel, but that and too much of "the high life" would come between Charles, his wife and their young daughter as tragedy unfolds.Based upon the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, Babylon Revisited.

willemarchie Yeah, it could use a script rewrite, but with all the celebrities and the Paris and coastal scenery, it is pretty cool. Also, it is fun to see the ever-smooth Roger Moore as a sort of cad. Van Johnson plays well as a drunken, tragic figure. Seriously, the colorization by Ted Turner or whoever doesn't do justice to the print, but just look at the sets and tell me they didn't pay attention to detail. Plus, the rally car race from, presumably, Nice or Monaco, is great with all the Porsches and Bugattis. And, while brief, provides a foretelling of future film races with the likes of James Bond and Cary Grant (in "To Catch A Thief"). Again, it is a film worth watching, but isn't in the same class as other films of the year, such as "On The Waterfront" or "The Caine Mutiny" or "Rear Window".

MartinHafer This is a rather annoying film. After all, the first 80% of it is very good--with nice acting and a very compelling story. Then, oddly, the last portion of the movie seems to fall apart and is a bit of a confusing and saccharine-like mess.The film begins with Van Johnson meeting and falling in love with Elizabeth Taylor. Considering how incredibly beautiful and sweet she was, it was easy to see why he dumped Donna Reed to pursue Taylor. Johnson's ambition it to publish a novel, but in the meantime he has married Taylor, has a lovely little girl and a well-paying job in Paris. What more could he want? Sure, his book has been rejected by some publishers, but considering everything he is still clearly a lucky man. But Johnson is NOT happy and is a self=indulgent idiot (to put it mildly). All he can do is feel sorry for himself for not being published. To bruise his shallow ego, he begins taking Taylor for granted and spends way too much time with his new friend--sultry Eva Gabor. Gabor is NOT the 'just friends' type, as she's been married multiple times. How any sane man could chose her over the sweet wife is beyond me and you really, really hate Johnson's character--a big switch for the guy who usually played such likable guys.All of this drama was compelling and I really got into the film--and wondered why the film had a mediocre score on IMDb. But then, late in the film, I saw exactly what the problem was. The film began to make no sense at all and decided to use clichés instead of decent writing. Out of the blue, Johnson locks Taylor out of the house and it's raining. In the real world, she'd get mad but that's all. Here in this Bizarro World, instead she gets sick and dies!!!! Folks, in real life standing in the rain does NOT cause death! And how she died with him rushing to her and having her die in his arms was dreadfully schmaltzy and stupid. And, what happened next was worse. Not one minute of the last portion of the film rang true or made sense. Considering that Johnson was cheating on his wife and locked the wife out in the rain, you'd THINK Taylor's father (Walter Pidgeon) would be at least a tiny bit angry--but he wasn't!! And, when Johnson CONTINUES to feel sorry for himself and neglects his daughter (necessitating her being cared for by others), you think this guy is a total bum--and yet they have them reunite at the end of the film and there's a 100% phony Hollywood ending!!! The first portion of the film I give a 9--it's that good. The last, I'd give a 2 or a 3--at best. An overall score of 5 seems reasonable as the actors do a nice job with a bubble-headed script--but frankly, the end just ruins the film for me.