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Beloved Infidel

1959, Movie, NR, 123 mins

Beloved Infidel: Review

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Top production and stars give this one all they're worth but it could have been better. The film deals with the brief love affair between Sheilah Graham and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who, during his last year of life, is attempting to write screenplays in Hollywood. He needs the cash to support his wife in an asylum and his daughter in a private school but also wants to redeem a failing literary career. He meets the ambitious English writer whom he takes under his wing. Peck is miscast (he is dark haired and towers well over six feet, whereas Fitzgerald was 5'7" and fair-haired), but he plays the role nobly. The story is more Kerr's than Peck's; her Graham is portrayed as his rescuer, a dubious role we must accept on faith. She is at first charmed by Peck, then, becoming his mistress, plagued by his drinking and insults. When he discovers she is not the blue blood she claims to be, he cruelly degrades her; he also interferes in her career much more than one would believe. And the whole story comes down to Peck's sudden death at an early age while with his paramour. (Fitzgerald died in Graham's company while reading a Princeton alumni magazine, chewing on a Hershey bar, and sipping a Coke. He had a massive heart attack, brought on, no doubt, by years of guzzling cheap gin, but he was sober at the time.) Albert plays a sort of Robert Benchley role and gives it as much as he can, Benchley (and Dorothy Parker, the only one to go to Fitzgerald's funeral) being the writer's friend. It's a sad, almost wasted film which dwells not on Fitzgerald's courage and magnificent talent, but on his failure and Graham's triumph, an image not in keeping with today's perspective of that tragic giant. leave a comment
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