As World War II ends in Europe, Stars and Stripes journalist Charles Wills (Van Johnson) is on the streets of Paris, covering the celebrations. He suddenly is grabbed by a beautiful woman who kisses him and disappears. Charles follows the crowd to Café Dhingo and meets another pretty woman named Marion Ellswirth (Donna Reed). The mutual attraction is instant, and she invites him to join her father's celebration of the end of the war. Charles, Marion and her French suitor Claude Matine arrive at the Ellswirth household, and we find that the woman who had kissed Charles is Marion's younger sister Helen (Elizabeth Taylor).
Their father, James Ellswirth (Walter Pidgeon), had survived World War I and promptly joined the Lost Generation. Unlike most drifters, he never grew out of it, raising his two daughters to desire such a lifestyle. Helen takes after her father and uses her beauty to sustain a life of luxury even though they are broke. Marion goes the other way and looks for serious-minded and conventional young men such as Claude, an aspiring prosecutor, and Charles, the future novelist.
Charles and Helen start dating and fall in love. After Helen recovers from pneumonia, they get married and settle in Paris. Helen eventually has a daughter, Vickie. Marion, having lost Charles to Helen, marries Claude. Charles struggles to make ends meet with his meager salary, unsuccessfully works on his novels and looks after Vickie.
The barren oil fields in Texas that James had bought years before begin to produce. Charles, to whom James had given the oil fields as a dowry, quits his job, and Helen and James begin to host parties. Sudden wealth changes Helen, who becomes more responsible, and Charles parties his wealth away after quitting his newspaper job and having all his novels rejected by publishers. They also each start to pursue other interests: Helen flirts with handsome tennis player Paul Lane (Roger Moore), and Charles competes in a local Monte Carlo-to-Paris race.
After the race, Charles returns to Paris to find Helen sitting in Café Dhingo with Paul. A fight breaks out between Paul and Charles, and an angry Charles goes home and puts the chain on the door. Helen comes home and can't get in. She calls out to him, but Charles is in a drunken stupor. Helen walks all the way to her sister's in the snow and rain, catches pneumonia again and dies.
Marion petitions for and gets full custody of Vickie, and Charles returns home to America. A few years later, having straightened himself out, published a book, and stopped drinking excessively, Charles returns to Paris to persuade Marion to give Vickie back to him. He tells Marion he only has one drink a day now. Marion refuses, still feeling resentful towards his having fallen for Helen instead of her and for his involvement in Helen's death. Claude steps in and tells Marion that she is punishing Charles for his not realizing that Marion loved him and marrying Helen, and is taking away his own daughter.
Marion goes into Café Dhingo, on whose main wall is a big picture of Helen, to look for Charles who is gazing at the painting, and tells him that Helen would not have wanted him to be alone. Outside the cafe, Claude is with Vickie. The child runs to Charles, and Charles and the child walk away together.
Where Fitzgerald did it in a few words—in a few subtle phrases that evoked a reckless era of golden dissipation toward the end of the Twenties' boom—Richard Brooks, who directed this picture after polishing up an Epstein-brothers' script, has done it in a nigh two-hour assembly of bistro balderdash and lush, romantic scenes.
At the time of the film's release, Variety called it an "engrossing romantic drama."[2]Bosley Crowther wrote "The story is trite. The motivations are thin. The writing is glossy and pedestrian. The acting is pretty much forced. Mr. Johnson as the husband is too bumptious when happy and too dreary when drunk; Miss Taylor as the wife is delectable, but she is also occasionally quite dull. Mr. Pidgeon is elaborately devilish, Sandra Descher as the child is over-cute, Donna Reed as the bitter sister is vapid and several others are in the same vein."[4]
In 2011, The Time Out Film Guide said "Despite a very corny script from Julius and Philip Epstein, which borrows clichés from Casablanca and countless An American in Paris yarns, this remains an enjoyable, if heavy-handed, melodrama...Pidgeon steals the show as ... a penniless chancer who still manages to live the good life."[5]
On Rotten Tomatoes, 78% of 9 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.3/10.[6]
Box office
According to MGM records the film earned $2,635,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $2,305,000 in other markets, resulting in a profit of $980,000.[1]
Copyright
The film was released in 1954; however, there was an error with the Roman numerals in the copyright notice showing "MCMXLIV" (1944) instead of "MCMLIV" (1954), meaning the term of copyright started 10 years before the film was released.[7] Thus, the normal 28-year copyright term ended just 18 years after the film was released, and MGM neglected to renew it presumably because it believed there was still 10 years left in the term.[7]The film entered the public domain in the United States in 1972.[7]
References
^ abcThe Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
