Tender Is the Night

source: Tender Is the Night

The movie follows the book beautifully, with the requisite changes to make it fit ( I do not agree with them all). Jones' performance, especially during the first half of this long movie is sharp and refreshing. If one had any doubts about Jill Saint John's acting ability, this early role would easily dispel them ( again, reading the book first is a must). The cinematography holds one's interest, even when the action slows down. This film is not for one who needs blood and sex every other scene, but how such a classic film as this has been largely forgotten is more of a comment on our 21st century culture than on the qualities of this gem. Be prepared for a thoughtful study and adaptation of Fitzgerald's work, not immediate gratification ( although Jones and saint John do provide sufficient eye candy, as should Jason Robards for the ladies ) .

The only reason I watched this film is because it's the final Jennifer Jones film I haven't seen. The film also features a pretty good cast--with Jason Robards Jr., Joan Fontaine, Paul Lukas and several other very good actors. The story is from F. Scott Fitzgerald's final complete novel...a story that owes MUCH to his life with his wife, Zelda. In fact, so much is like their actual lives together, it really makes you wonder what's real and what's fictional. This was written during a time when Zelda was institutionalized for mental illness. Dick (Robards) and Nicole (Jones) have rented a villa in southern France. After inviting some neighboring expatriates to a party, the couple end up getting in an emotional fight. A bit later, through flashbacks, you learn more about them. Apparently Dick was Nicole's psychiatrist! Back in the day, a psychiatrist marrying a patient was not necessarily considered unethical (today it would surely get your license to practice revoked). Anyway, he married her out of some misguided notion that she needed him and he wanted to take care of her. Where all this goes, well, you should just see the film for yourself. As for the movie, I actually LIKED the plot. But the film was so bereft of life and energy, they managed to take a good idea and make it flat and dull. I think the actors all try hard but I think the fundamental problems were with the script and, perhaps, the direction. Speeding things up a bit and eliminating much of the first portion of the film might have meant less Fitzgerald, but I do think speeding up the plot really would have helped. Also, having more energy...that REALLY would have helped. Not a bad film...but one that seems to plot...and it's two hour running time feels like three.

Well, c'est la vie. A wonderful cast and beautiful scenery are the highlights of "Tender is the Night," a 1962 film starring Jason Robards, Jennifer Jones, Tom Ewell, Joan Fonaine, Jill St. John, and Paul Lukas. The film is based on a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald wrote beautiful prose, but much of his work has been difficult to adapt to the screen. He himself worked as a writer in Hollywood but wound up uncredited on most of the scripts and told someone that he did recognize one of his lines in a film that evidently had not been cut from a script. In this film, Robards plays Dick Driver, a psychiatrist who falls for one of his patients, Nicole (Jones). Nicole is being treated for mental instability, the result of incest (though this is only hinted at). When Dick realizes his feelings, and hers, he quickly distances himself, but she runs into him after she leaves the sanitarium and the two wind up getting married. Nicole is filthy rich, and the money is controlled by her sister (Joan Fontaine). Dick gets lulled into the good life, the parties, the travel, the luxury, and while he intends to return to his work at the sanitarium and finish a book, he doesn't go. This is mainly because the insecure and sometimes paranoid Nicole is resistant. When he finally returns to the sanitarium, his mentor (Lukas) is dying and the sanitarium has been taken over by a colleague, who only wants Driver's investment. Driver refuses, since he would have to get the money from Nicole, but she insists. But for Driver, it feels like it's all too late. The acting is superb and Jones, one of my favorites, looks gorgeous throughout. She is somewhat nervous and mannered as Nicole, but that's the character, and she captures her. Robards is strong, emotional, and excellent as the deeply convicted Driver. And how wonderful to see Paul Lukas. I actually recognized his voice and then looked at his face -- I'm so used to seeing him in movies made 20 years earlier that I didn't recognize him at first. The problem with the film for me is that so much that goes on is beneath the surface -- this can be a fascinating feature, but it is directed at too leisurely a pace by Henry King. The St. John character is never really fleshed out, she darts in and out of the picture; ditto the drunken composer played by Tom Ewell. We just don't know enough about him to care. Joan Fontaine wears some great clothes and acts well, and we do get to know her somewhat. The other problem is the time in which it is set, which seems a bit generic. It's supposed to be the '20s - I can tell by the music - but not by anything else. The ambiance is '60s. Nevertheless, Tender is the Night was an ambitious project that probably could have used some judicious editing, but if you're a Jones fan you won't want to miss it.

TENDER IS THE NIGHT is best appreciated less as an adaptation of the Fitzgerald novel than as an original work. At the time it was made, 1962, many of Fitzgerald's themes were still considered beyond what would be allowed on the screen. Instead, producer David O. Selznick sought a vehicle to showcase his wife, actress Jennifer Jones, and other stars were cast who were not ideal representations of the characters Fitzgerald had imagined. Veteran director Henry King, whose career dated back to the 1910s, had a long tenure as the leading house director at Twentieth Century-Fox. With this film King for the first time had a producer who attempted to dictate how shooting should be done, and he and Selznick clashed. The resulting long film satisfied neither man, and it was the last film of both. Nonetheless, TENDER IS THE NIGHT, in its own right, memorably depicts the crumbling of a talented man of promising future, played by Jason Robards as therapist to wealthy Jones in a sanitarium. Against his better judgment, the two fall in love and he agrees to marry her, despite the breach of professional standards. Over the course of their marriage, Robards loses his intellectual drive and becomes increasingly dependent on Jones, who, although she had begun desperately needing his guidance and love, gradually transforms. Jones becomes a strong, independent woman, and ultimately leaves behind the man who began as her mentor but who has lost the very qualities which attracted her to him. Yet Jones's full recovery from sanitarium to be capable of life on her own is a result of the same marriage that proved disastrous for Robards, and the complex, shifting nature of power and ambition in their union, and its personal outcome, provides an absorbing, cautionary romantic parable.

David O Selznick was not having much luck with the films he produced from about 1957 onwards.Jennifer Jones, his wife, had just had another flop 5 years before with her previous film, "A Farewell To Arms"(1957), based on the Ernest Hemingway book.Hemingway never approved of the screenplays and filmed results of his work and F Scott Fitzgerald fares no better here with the film of his book, "Tender Is The Night".Maybe with Henry King as director Selznick hoped for better.King had had a hit with Jones in, "Love Is A Many Spendid Thing (1955), but was now rather old and out of touch with modern film direction techniques, especially sophisticated, European genres that were breaking new ground with modern audiences. The story, such as it is, involves the central character, Nicole who is in a psychiatric ward in Zurich, Switzerland in the 1920's.Her doctor, (Dick Diver) played by Jason Robards Jnr. almost cures her so she can leave the clinic.In the process he becomes emotionally involved with her (unprofessional) and a cynic would say it was because Nicole comes from a very wealthy American family where money is no object.He marries Nicole but in the process loses his career drive being seduced by the easy money for which he no longer has to work.Joan Fontaine plays Nicole's elder sister, Baby Warren and ultimately controls the purse strings.To get back his self esteem Dick Diver finally leaves his idle wife and child and returns Stateside to redicover his life's values.The rest of the film justs drifts, showing rich people doing nothing in particular. I felt the film failed mainly because you do not have sympathy for any of the central characters and because the plot line is very sparse.I would have thought Selznick would have learnt his lesson after the previous debacle, mentioned above.

When this was released I managed to see most films first-run, except the ones clearly aimed at my age group. (Such a snob, n'est-ce pas?!?) So, being a fan of both Jennifer and Joan, I went to a Los Angeles-area theater with top-notch projection and sound. Back then Twentieth-Century Fox rarely stinted on sending companies to the actual locales of the stories being filmed, so this one has plenty of its share of gorgeous shots set in Switzerland and elsewhere on the Continent, as I recall. But, as other comments herein attest, the rest is somewhat of a disappointment. Henry King, the director, seemed to encourage Jennifer Jones in some of her less-attractive mannerisms which somehow were not so apt as a rendition of her character's mental distress. Jason Robards, Jr. was never much of a success as a romantic lead, in my opinion. And Joan Fontaine was assigned the rather thankless role of a rich "bitch." All in all it's a prime example of how the studio "system" was growing out of touch with an ever-younger movie audience. Nevertheless for those of us who have always appreciated luxurious eye candy, it was a fairly tasty treat.

Jennifer Jones was a real movie star. Chic, glamorous and was simply great in front of the camera. A very good actress who in hindsight made far too few films. In this Henry King directed film of the classic Fitzgerald novel, Jennifer Jones stars in the lead role of Nicole Diver Jennifer Jones looked 30 years old in this picture beautifully photographed by 20th's top studio camera man Leon Shamroy. I liked Jennifer Jones in this movie more so than any other save for "Love Is A Many Splendored Thing" and "Song of Bernadette" both directed by Henry King. The King-Jennifer Jones relationship was meaningful in the success of those films. The outdoor scenes shot in Europe are particularly good; the interiors were done at 20th's studios in Los Angeles. Oscar winners Paul Lukas and Joan Fontaine give fine support to the Star and I found Jason Robards fine as Dick Diver. There was much discussion about former Jennifer Jones co stars and friends Gregory Peck or William Holden playing Dick Diver but eventually the role went to Jason Robards who had played F Scott Fitzgerald in the play The Disenchanted on Broadway. Kudos to a great theme song Tender Is The Night which was nominated for Best Song, it should have won. A beautiful haunting song! This lushly produced movie really gets to you and when you see it over and over it is like a beautiful spell. I wish I could see this movie uncut and at a major revival house in wide screen. The picture when released was not critically well received and 20th Century Fox quickly released the film and forgot about it. 20th Century Fox needs to release the DVD of this Film.

An American doctor in the 1930s marries the mental patient he has been treating, but life together in the South of France proves to be an unsettling mix of emotional highs and lows. F. Scott Fitzgerald's epic novel, the last book he had published before his death, is most likely unfilmable; this glossy, indifferently-made adaptation has so little depth that it barely seems to give the source material a chance. Jason Robards continually snarls and flashes his teeth as Dr. Richard Diver (whom everyone ridiculously keeps referring to as 'Dick'); Jennifer Jones is the unstable wife he has 'cured'; Joan Fontaine is Jennifer's decadent sister; Jill St. John is a flirtatious actress out to stir up trouble in paradise. No one involved has the vaguest idea how to approach the material, least of all director Henry King, who allows his cast to visibly flounder. In a dated subplot, Robards, who has been treating a young homosexual, is accused by the boy's father of having similar inclinations, to which Robards responds like a rabid dog. It's too ludicrous to take seriously, and yet too limp and meandering to be passable as camp. The locales are nice and the Oscar-nominated title song is a big plus. Otherwise, an awfully long 'Night'. ** from ****

Other comments cover every aspect except: The semi-autobiographical nature of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's novel, "Tender Is The Night". It is the story of his love for Zelda Sayre. Putting himself in the role of a psychiatrist who makes the fatal mistake of falling in love with a patient. F. Scott Fitzgerald from Minneapolis, MN, transforms his real life experiences into fiction beautifully in the Fitzgeraldian style. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald spent time at Shepard-Pratt Hospital and at Eudowood Sanitarium. Fitzgerald and Zelda became hypnotized by the lifestyle provided by the money from Scott's work. When the money ran out he went back to work until his luck ran out. I enjoyed seeing "Tender Is The Night" several times and would enjoying seeing this film again.