This film seems to have been vilified above and beyond the call of critical duty at the time of its initial release and a couple of posters on this page have seen fit to heave the old harpoon at a very underrated film. Though far from an expert on Scott Fitzgerald I have a strong feeling that he was around forty when he died and Gregory peck was forty three when he portrayed him so realistically that's about right; Deborah Kerr was thirty eight so that's also more or less realistic. By all accounts Fitzgerald retained a certain youthful charm even in alcoholic middle age and if you're looking for an actor who can do charm with one hand behind his back without resorting to the gauche bashfulness of a Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper then Peck is definitely your man especially if, as here, he's also required to brush the charm away as if swatting a fly and reveal the cruel and brutal streak beneath the surface. I've always had a problem with Deborah Kerr as a sex object, even in From Here To Eternity she didn't really convince me, I always found her far more believable as the repressed spinster of the kind she played so well in Separate Tables. The upshot was that I came to this as a great admirer of both Peck and Fitzgerald and someone prepared to tolerate Kerr. Perhaps because I was familiar with many of the situations - not least the episode which Budd Schulberg has written about so memorably both in his roman a clef The Disenchanted and in his own recollections of the time he and Fitzgerald left Los Angeles by train bound for New Hampshire where they had been engaged as co-writers on Winter Carnival; completely unaware of Fitzgerald's status as on-the-wagon Schulberg broke open a parting gift of champagne and shared it with Scott with hilarious/disastrous results depending on your point of view - and enjoy nothing more than movies about movie-making I enjoyed virtually every frame of this and found the moment at the very end when Scott is working away on The Last Tycoon and Sheilah is reading in the background and suddenly, magically, they both look up and smile a tender, lovers-only smile, resume what they are doing and then, seconds later, Scott slumps forward and is dead before his head hits the desk one of the most moving moments I've ever experienced in a cinema. I'd certainly add this to my DVD collection.
Review of Beloved Infidel
