Tender Is the Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald did run a bit to language with his writing and this all-too literal adaptation suffers a bit from a lack of pruning. Consequently, we have a great deal of dialogue and perhaps not enough passion from a cast who seem curiously disconnected from the story. That plot revolves around some gradually evolving marital dysfunction which peppered with some flashbacks introduces us to "Nicole" (Jennifer Jones) who is married to "Dick" (Jason Robards) who used to be the psychiatrist helping her with her dypsomania. The story now takes us on a roller-coaster ride of alcohol-fuelled neuroses and conflict that offer loads of opportunities for intensity and tension but that Robards seems a little uncomfortable with. His inability to punch to his weight leaves Jones to do too much of the heavy lifting and though Tom Ewell's "Abe" injects some humour and, of course, reprises the title song whenever he gets a chance there is something just a little too sanitised about this overlong enterprise. It does look good and the production design offers us quite an authentic glimpse of just how the other half lived - epitomised well by Joan Fontaine's "Baby" whose scenes with "Dick" might have been the only source of a spark throughout this film, but I reckon it needed much more of a re-write to focus more on the nuances of this myriad of flawed characters. Perhaps the casting of "Dick" could have been just a little more robust and for my money, the desperation of this story comes across better within the confines of a stage.