One of the great movies about the movies and probably the most underrated. It's also possibly the most underrated of Elia Kazan's film, (it was to be his last), just as it was to be F. Scott Fitzgerald's final, and unfinished, novel. "The Last Tycoon" was based on Fitzgerald's time in Hollywood and its central character, Monroe Stahr, (a superb Robert De Niro), is said to be based on Irving Thalberg. Stahr is the hottest producer in Hollywood; his wife was the biggest star but she died and then one night he sees Kathleen Moore, (newcomer Ingrid Boulting, very good), a girl who, if not the double of his late wife, looks very like her and he falls for her in a strange, almost existentialist way.
Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay and it's a wonderfully knowing account, not just of the movie business, but of the transcience of human relationships. If Stahr knew as much about people, particularly women, as he does about movies, he might be a happier man, (he begins almost every conversation with 'Do you ever go to the movies'). Of course, Kazan knew as much about the movies as anyone and he's in his element here. There are wonderful asides about the business of making movies, both from an artistic as well as a commercial, perspective. He's also assembled a superb all-star cast as various actors, directors, writers and business people with Jack Nicholson, Jeanne Moreau, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum and a young Theresa Russell the stand-outs but the film flopped and is now regarded as something of a cult movie. It may not be Kazan's late masterpiece but it is still quite wonderful.
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