The Last Tycoon

Director: Elia Kazan

1976 / 123min / DCP

Scott Fitzgerald poured all of his fascination towards and frustration with Hollywood into his incomplete last novel, which Kazan would turn into his bittersweet final feature. Robert De Niro brings brooding romanticism and Art Deco-sleek looks to his depiction of Fitzgerald’s brilliant but sickly Golden Age studio production chief Monroe Stahr (a figure based in part on Universal and MGM’s “Boy Wonder” Irving Thalberg) who, despite his mastery of the Dream Factory, has to grapple with a nagging discontent—and the increasing insubordination of his workers, most notably a Communist screenwriter played by Jack Nicholson, in fine form.