It didn't help that the print I watched was very bleached out giving the impression the whole thing had been shot under water. Two exceptionally fine actresses plus one wooden actor may well work in some situations but not, alas, here. It was, I confess, new to me and given the date it was televised it was clearly a cynical exercise to get a piece of the hype for the feature film The Great Gatsby which had just been released. The irony of Scott Fitzgerald is that he was a brilliant writer whose colorful and ultimately tragic life always seems to offer more scope than his fiction and invariably defeats all attempts to capture it on celluloid. Even as I write the dreaded Baz Luhrman has yet another version of Gatsby in the can and if it proves as execrable as his Moulin Rouge then no one will come out ahead. The real Zelda, of course, suffered a mental breakdown and Scott burned himself out writing to pay the bills for her hospitalization, turned to drink and died forgotten; Zelda survived him but burned to death when the asylum in which she was incarcerated caught fire. Surely both of them deserve a better memorial than Last of the Belles.
Add a Review
-
writers_reign25 August 2012
-
nogodnomasters17 November 2020In 1928 F. Scott Fitzgerald (Richard Chamberlain) is writing a short story. He is greatly in debt and has abused Zelda (Blythe Danner) until she is near crazy. His short to no one's surprise is semi-autobiographical as writers create an alternate reality after they messed up their own life.
Looks like a good TV drama for the era, but slow by today's standards. The film is overly thematic. Nice facial close-up of Blythe Danner -
mark.waltz5 November 2021A very dull waste of a lot of talent, this TV movie about the private life of F. Scott Fitzgerald has a cliched script and a surprisingly cheap look for something set during the flapper era of the 1920s. Yes, there are some great sets, costumes and 78 RPM recordings, but the pacing of the film is so dull and so lethargic that this doesn't even give a glimpse into the fascinating life of a great author. Richard Chamberlain seems to be aware that he's stuck in a dud because he seems to be walking through his role, and Blythe Danner as Zelda isn't too exciting either. That leaves it to Susan Sarandon who is not yet at her peak, and her character is vapid and uninteresting. Another issue is that her voice is so high-pitched that often you can't even really understand what she is saying.
The problem is that the script flows in so many different directions that it's hard to know where you are, which characters are involved with who and even more important if any of it is even remotely true. Yes the names are real, but there has to be a better way of presenting the life of one of the great American literary figures of the past century. If anything gives away the fact that this is a cheaply made TV film, it's the horrible use of titles, hard to read over the credits and breaking it up into acts that makes it look like some cheap made directly for video movie. You can have all the glamour in the world but if you don't have a great story and interesting characters and believable performances, you're going to end up with a dud. -
oscar-3510 June 2008An author(Chamberlain) working on his new opus tries to reach reconciliation with his first love, Zelda, in the midst of WW1, Stars: Richard Chamberlain, Susan Sarandon. If you enjoy drawing room dramas of the upper class, you might enjoy this film. The film revolves around the self-absorbed rich and their daily concerns and pretentious lives. Chamberlain works well in this film. The upscale dialog and scenes got to be totally boring. I had a hard time relating or finding these characters relevant and empathetic to the plot. Most roles were actors portraying social dinosaurs that haven't learned their rich world is collapsing under their velor slipper-ed pampered feet. The WW1 scenes were squeaky clean and just more officers drinking tea and complaining about the mail from home being late to the battleground. Sarandon seems to be out-of-place and her on screen work was completely lacking her usual edginess. This one will put you to sleep in a hurry.
-
BandSAboutMovies22 November 2023Directed by George Schaefer and written by James Costigan, this has a pretty fun cast. There's Richard Chamberlain as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Blythe Danner as Zelda Fitzgerald, Susan Sarandon (a year before The Great Waldo Pepper and The Rocky Horror Picture Show) as Ailie Calhoun, David Huffman (who died way too young as he was stabbed by a criminal while outside the Old Globe Theater in San Francisco) as Andy McKennam, Ernest Thompson (the writer of On Golden Pond) as Earl Shoenmm, Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica) as Bill Knowles and Planet of the Apes TV show cast member James Naughton as Captain John Haines. And Brooke Adams!
This is the story of how Fitzgerlad met his wife. I worked with Blythe Danner a bunch on health care commercials and I always got her after she'd been through twelve other agencies, so she was exhausted and would turn a :30 second commercial into a :90. I purposefully watched the time she hosted SNL and told her. After nearly years of us barely interacting, she sparkled and said, "Was I any good?" It wasn't a great episode, the kind of one that aired in 1982 when the show was finding its way back. It was the kind of SNL where the music guest - Rickie Lee Jones - did three songs instead of two. But I told her, "Your monologue was perfect." -
roadlt22 May 2000"F. Scott Fitzgerald and "The Last of the Belles'" was a large budget and highly publicized made for television movie apparently designed to capitalize on interest in Fitzgerald because of the then current release of the theatrical movie "The Great Gatsby" starring Robert Redford. "Belles" is a story within a story. Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, have returned form Europe. Through high living, he is deeply in debt, while his wife Zelda has distanced herself becoming obsessed with being a ballerina, even though she is 30 years old and never had a dance lesson, which indeed was true of the real Zelda. Fitzgerald is out of ideas for new stories and spends the empty hours carousing. Finally, the seed of an idea for a story begins to emerge. The film then alternates between Fitzgerald's life and his story of young soldiers from the north at a training camp in the south during World War I and the southern belles they court. Richard Chamberlain is Fitzgerald and Blythe Danner is Zelda, while David Huffman and Susan Sarandon are the couple in the story. A big flaw is Chamberlain's wooden performance. Sarandon is affected but intriguing, while Huffman and particularly Danner give commendable performances. While Sarandon's character becomes involved with so many men, it becomes difficult to follow, nevertheless there is a plaintive quality to both stories. It is that quality which remains once the film is over and makes this worth seeing.
-
Viewed this TV film in 1974 and after seeing "THE GREAT GATSBY", it was a big let down. Just recently I viewed this film again and it had an entire different meaning, Susan Sarandon and Richard Chamberlain made this a great short story film of drama, romance and young passoniate love. The director, George Schaefer, clearing showed what life was like during WW1, the music, the Southern way of living and the same exact situations America had to face when going to War and having to say goodby to their sweethearts and the broken hearts. At times I found myself getting mad at Susan, she just seemed to give all the men in her life a hard time and made you want to see her an OLD MAID! That is good acting and that is why this film is a great Classic to view.