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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 27663
Released: November 18, 2003 |
| Our Price: $4.76 |
| Used Price: $4.93 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 2-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD
Description of The Last Tycoon:
Very little of the energy and intensity of Elia Kazan's great early work remains in his last movie, a flat adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished final novel about a Hollywood movie mogul of the 1930s. The story still feels like a half-written first draft, a grab bag of roughed-out scenes, even though Harold Pinter supposedly polished up the screenplay. Robert De Niro manages a silky, nuanced performance as the mogul, Monroe Stahr (modeled upon MGM's Irving Thalberg, the suave vulgarian who eviscerated Eric Von Stroheim's Greed), and works hard to transform this essayistic conceit of a character, a sexually repressed guru of mass audience manipulation, into a plausible wounded human being. The movie gets a welcome jolt of energy whenever vivid supporting players like Jack Nicholson, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, or Theresa Russell turn up. --David Chute
The Last Tycoon Reviews:
A Major Disappoinment 
2009-11-09 - THE LAST TYCOON(1976)---Robert de Niro, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Boulting, Theresa Russell, Jeanne Moreau, Tony Curtis, Ray Milland, Dana Andrews.
Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's last novel, de Niro plays an obsessive production chief loosely based on Irving Thalberg. I found the movie very unsatisfying, despite the impressive cast. It seemed to me to lack any sort of "thematic unity", other than de Niro's preoccupation with the smallest details of every movie he's making. There is an odd sort of "love story", between de Niro and a British actress by the name of Ingrid Boulting, that never seems to have a point---they are "on", they are "off", they are "on" again and we never really understand what's going on with them. Angelica Huston has a small cameo role. To my knowledge, this is the only time that de Niro and Nicholson are paired on the screen---their scenes together are brief---perhaps 5-10 minutes total, but, not surprisingly, they are one of the best things about this troblesome film.
A somewhat slow-paced film with a plethora of stars 
2009-08-29 - This movie is great for people that are movie buffs, or people interested in F Scott Fitzgerald, classic cinema or classic actors. The film stars Robert DeNiro, Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson, Donald Pleasence, Ray Milland, Dana Andrews, Angelica Huston, and in a near cameo, John Carradine. Despite this amazing array of stars, the film itself is lacking. I found it slow paced, lacking story and a bit dull. I did enjoy seeing great actors perform though. I would only really recommend this to people who love these actors, because if you don't know them, the film has no depth.
The film revolves around Irving G Thalberg like character Monroe Stahr, a movie producer. The plot follows his empty dreams of building a home, yearning a dead love and other sub-plots.
It is a different approach from Elia Kazan, who usually made high-intensity, moving films about Antisemitism, Corrupt Officials, Life on the streets and so forth. This is definitely a change of pace for Kazan, who is famous for hard-packing dramas.
The Terrible Tycoon
2009-07-18 - Very slow movie, hardly any excitement. Seems like no music either which makes it drag on. Best part is towards the end when DeNiro meets Nicholson.
Master OF The Rare LASERDISCs Movies. 
2005-07-14 - I have The Last Tycoon 1977 ON LASERDISC And ON DVD too,'tis one of My Favorite Movies,you will love this one :P
An Enigmatic and Reclusive Cinema Giant
2005-02-06 - Monroe Stahr is a high-powered Hollywood executive seen as a creative genius by his studio peers. What makes him so different from so many executive screen depictions is that he is not the boisterously expansive "eat on the run" giant one so frequently sees, but is more of an otherwise faceless bureaucrat who says little and acts only when it is necessary.
"The Last Tycoon" was director Elia Kazan's last film. The 1976 drama was adapted from the final work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's friend John O'Hara and others of the literary cognoscenti believed it would be his enduring work, but alas, before he could complete it he succumbed to a fatal heart attack in his apartment at the Laurel Arms in Hollywood, located next door to the Garden of Allah, the author's favorite Southern California residence, but one that was beyond his means at that point of a problem plagued career.
The difficulty with a work of this kind that ends before the creator had an opportunity to instill a deft finishing touch is that so much is left to the imagination as we abound in a sea of speculation. Celebrated British playwright and screen scenarist Harold Pinter entered the picture and applied his efforts to provide a conclusion. He focuses on the enigmatic and impossible to reach elements of Monroe Stahr, who was drawn in real life by Fitzgerald from his days as an MGM screenwriter, when he knew and observed Irving Thalberg. Like Fitzgerald, Thalberg was a product of New York intellectual circles. Both soared like comet while still in their twenties. They both also died tragically young. Fitzgerald's heart problems brought about his death at 44. Thalberg, never blessed with a strong constitution, succumbed at 37 from pneumonia.
Robert DeNiro, then a hot young talent who had recently dazzled in "Taxi Driver," played the cards dealt him with professional skill as the enigmatic Monroe Stahr. It is difficult to internalize a driving dynamo that keeps so much of his emotion pent up within him, as was the character's persona. Robert Michum does his usual superb job, this time as the studio head that tries to understand DeNiro, but is ultimately as perplexed as anyone else. So is his spoiled daughter played by Theresa Russell. On her vacation time from an impressive Eastern college she seeks to seduce DeNiro, but her passes fall consistently incomplete.
Instead DeNiro expends his outward passions, but even then in his normal distant style, on Ingrid Boulting, who is engaged to an architect who spends much of his time out of Los Angeles. On one of those occasions, when she is visiting the studio as a tourist, DeNiro sees her and is awestruck at the resemblance between her and his deceased former movie star wife, whose tragedy he cannot put behind him. Boulting's friend Anjelica Houston runs interference and hopes to attract the movie executive's romantic attention, but she cannot help but fail. Whereas she is direct and extroverted, DeNiro is cut from the same cloth as her girlfriend Boulting, with both being taciturn enigmas.
The tempest waiting to erupt within DeNiro ultimately explodes when Mitchum assigns his troubleshooter to talk to New Yorker Jack Nicholson, who has come to Hollywood to unionize writers. Mitchum disgustedly refers to Nicholson as a Communist agitator, normal terminology from studio executives seeing union organizers as threats to their tightly run power bases.
When it is DeNiro who ultimately loses his poise by getting drunk and being unable to tend to business at the time that Mitchum needs him to be in top form the studio boss, along with the chief legal representative from the New York office, played with executive efficiency by Ray Milland, believe it is time for DeNiro to take a long and badly needed rest.
In a film that is replete with big names Tony Curtis excels in his role as a frightened leading man who has developed impotence. He goes to DeNiro and tells him his story, looking for help. The irony is that seeking assistance from the highly troubled DeNiro is like the legendary case of "the blind leading the blind."
