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ZILCH IN THE NIGHT Lovers of F. Scott Fitzgerald often say Tender is the Night is his best work. In a rare instance of succinctness, David O. Selznick, who admired the book and for years wanted to make a movie of it with his wife Jennifer Jones as Nicole, capsulated for others who are less sure of its greatness: “Fitzgerald had a great story to tell, but told only its superficial aspects, omitting each and every one of those scenes that really constituted what he had to say.” To a degree, he’s right; the book, after seven painful drafts (often under the title The Drunkard’s Holiday) ends up, in Fitzgerald’s own words, “a woman’s book” exposing wife Zelda’s brandy-saturated laundry without a clarifying rinse. In the novel, Scott writes of Zelda/Nicole as “a ‘schizohrêne’—alternately a person to whom nothing be explained and to whom nothing could be explained.” His observations pungent but, in writing about his deepening alcoholism, he leaves out the more damaging details; you have to read into the omissions what you know from other sources—those who accuse him of betraying or gaslighting her. (The gambit of turning himself into a psychiatrist in need of one didn’t impress the critics when the novel was published; apparently in years-later reëvaluation it does.) The 1962 movie version was meant to be a definitive panorama of the 20s Jazz Age, and what an impossible goal to achieve if you’re time-traveling to posh European settings with Jones as Zelda, Jason Robards as F. Scott, the insipid Jill St. John, Joan Fontaine, Tom Ewell’s Abe North (modeled after Abe Burrows but doing Oscar Levant again) and something named Cesare Danova. Except the high-styled Balmain flapper outfits and George Masters hair for Jones and the T-shirt & trunk swimsuits for the men, neither the movie nor the acting is of any discernible era, despite everything being heavily planted. (This kind of deluxe twaddle has a black pianist improvising a finale to the movie’s Oscar-nominated love theme songwriter Ewell seems unable to complete and, despite needing the help, unwilling to accept it, resulting in someone’s death.) Selznick didn’t get the chance to produce the movie, so he can’t get blame, but he made every effort to interfere. Reading his memos, you learn about various scenes being badly truncated or cut altogether, how gooey ruinous 50s chorus music was added, how studio dubbing replaced supposedly good takes, on and on. To be fair, Henry King, who directed Jones in The Song of Bernadette and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, isn’t someone known as a champion of literary giants, not after the hack jobs The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Sun Also Rises. (He also directed the deadly Beloved Infidel, about Fitzgerald’s affair with gossip Sheila Graham). He gets a few good near-psycho screams out of Jones early on and he manages to keep the dull stagecraft of Robards, sometimes looking like John Huston, to a minimum. But there’s not much “tender” shown during any night: for all the painful regret in his departure, when Robards the doctor leaves Jones the patient he might as well be leaving for the office. The irony here is boozy-faced Jones, who was somewhat touched in real life and inadvertently revealed herself in her performances, is by the end of this movie saner as Nicole than just about any other character she played. Zelda, who died in a fire sweeping the looney bin at which she was being treated for yet another breakdown, would appreciate her husband’s blunder. Givenchy might have considered suing Balmain for dolling up Fontaine in one scene to resemble an ageing Holly Golightly. The only version of the love theme worth listening to—and regrettably not used to open the movie—is Tony Bennett’s. Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved.
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