The Last Time I Saw Paris

1954 DramaRomance 116 minutes Directed by Richard Brooks

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About The Last Time I Saw Paris

At the end of the war in Paris, Stars and Stripes reporter Charles Wills is kissed by a stranger and then meets Marion Ellswirth at Café Dhingo. The stranger is her sister Helen. Charles and Helen marry and have a daughter, Vicki. Oil money from Helen's father James turns the household into a round of parties. Charles finds Helen at the café with Paul Lane, they fight, and he chains the door. Helen walks to Marion's through snow and rain, falls ill with pneumonia, and dies. Marion gets custody of Vicki. Years later Charles comes back with a published book and less drinking. At the café, in front of a painting of Helen, Marion says Helen would not have wanted him alone. Outside, Vicki runs to him.

Cast & crew

More about The Last Time I Saw Paris

Richard Brooks directed it and shared the script with Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein. Jack Cummings produced it for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's story Babylon Revisited. John D. Dunning edited it. Loew's released it on 18 November 1954. It runs 116 minutes.

Themes

  • A marriage after the liberation
  • Money that spoils the house
  • A locked door
  • A child returned
  • Paris
  • Charles Wills
  • Helen Ellswirth
  • Elizabeth Taylor
  • Van Johnson
  • Babylon Revisited

Reviews

Bosley Crowther, in The New York Times, wrote that Brooks had stretched Fitzgerald's short story into a long run of bistro scenes, and that the motivations were thin.

Audiences

MGM's records list $2,635,000 in the United States and Canada and $2,305,000 elsewhere, and a profit of $980,000.

Look

Joseph Ruttenberg photographed the picture, including the Monaco location used for the road race.

Music

Conrad Salinger composed the score. The title song is Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's The Last Time I Saw Paris, first used in Lady Be Good (1941).

Notes

  • Elizabeth Taylor plays Helen. Van Johnson plays Charles, his last role for MGM. Walter Pidgeon is James. Donna Reed is Marion. Eva Gabor, Kurt Kasznar, and George Dolenz are billed.
  • Roger Moore makes his Hollywood debut.
  • Sandy Descher plays Vicki.
  • Charles races from Monte Carlo back to Paris before the fight at the café.
  • Marion marries Claude Matine after she loses Charles to Helen.

Scenes

  • A stranger kisses Charles in the street and disappears into the crowd.
  • Charles chains the apartment door, and Helen walks to Marion's in the snow.
  • Vicki runs to Charles outside Café Dhingo.

Influenced by

  • Babylon Revisited

Also available

  • Internet Archive (last_time_i_saw_paris)
  • Wikimedia Commons (The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) by Richard Brooks.webm)