trudyr_1999 I had wanted to see this version for many years, as I love the novel, but I didn't expect it to be very good--and my expectations were met! The actors are fine, but the screenplay tampered with Fitzgerald's story in both major and minor ways, and didn't make it better. It's not really worth giving spoilers, but I'll just say that the movie is worth seeing if you just want to satisfy your curiosity, as I did. A much more faithful and better-quality adaptation is the 1985 Showtime miniseries, but I'm not sure if it's available anywhere. Regarding that version, I thought Mary Steenburgen, an actress I generally love, was miscast as Nicole, but Peter Strauss (as Dick) and the rest of the cast were very good. BTW, since I'm a Fitzgerald junkie, I'll share some background: Fitzgerald created Dick and Nicole as an amalgam of two couples: his friends Gerald and Sara Murphy, wealthy American expatriates in France; and himself and Zelda. The Divers' glamour, wealth, and charisma derive from Gerald and Sara, their neuroses from Scott and Zelda. (BTW, Zelda was not a millionairess, as one reviewer said--her family in Alabama was comfortably middle-class, not in the millionaire category.)

blanche-2 Well, c'est la vie.A wonderful cast and beautiful scenery are the highlights of "Tender is the Night," a 1962 film starring Jason Robards, Jennifer Jones, Tom Ewell, Joan Fonaine, Jill St. John, and Paul Lukas. The film is based on a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald.Fitzgerald wrote beautiful prose, but much of his work has been difficult to adapt to the screen. He himself worked as a writer in Hollywood but wound up uncredited on most of the scripts and told someone that he did recognize one of his lines in a film that evidently had not been cut from a script.In this film, Robards plays Dick Driver, a psychiatrist who falls for one of his patients, Nicole (Jones). Nicole is being treated for mental instability, the result of incest (though this is only hinted at). When Dick realizes his feelings, and hers, he quickly distances himself, but she runs into him after she leaves the sanitarium and the two wind up getting married.Nicole is filthy rich, and the money is controlled by her sister (Joan Fontaine). Dick gets lulled into the good life, the parties, the travel, the luxury, and while he intends to return to his work at the sanitarium and finish a book, he doesn't go. This is mainly because the insecure and sometimes paranoid Nicole is resistant. When he finally returns to the sanitarium, his mentor (Lukas) is dying and the sanitarium has been taken over by a colleague, who only wants Driver's investment. Driver refuses, since he would have to get the money from Nicole, but she insists. But for Driver, it feels like it's all too late.The acting is superb and Jones, one of my favorites, looks gorgeous throughout. She is somewhat nervous and mannered as Nicole, but that's the character, and she captures her. Robards is strong, emotional, and excellent as the deeply convicted Driver. And how wonderful to see Paul Lukas. I actually recognized his voice and then looked at his face -- I'm so used to seeing him in movies made 20 years earlier that I didn't recognize him at first.The problem with the film for me is that so much that goes on is beneath the surface -- this can be a fascinating feature, but it is directed at too leisurely a pace by Henry King. The St. John character is never really fleshed out, she darts in and out of the picture; ditto the drunken composer played by Tom Ewell. We just don't know enough about him to care. Joan Fontaine wears some great clothes and acts well, and we do get to know her somewhat.The other problem is the time in which it is set, which seems a bit generic. It's supposed to be the '20s - I can tell by the music - but not by anything else. The ambiance is '60s.Nevertheless, Tender is the Night was an ambitious project that probably could have used some judicious editing, but if you're a Jones fan you won't want to miss it.

moonspinner55 An American doctor in the 1930s marries the mental patient he has been treating, but life together in the South of France proves to be an unsettling mix of emotional highs and lows. F. Scott Fitzgerald's epic novel, the last book he had published before his death, is most likely unfilmable; this glossy, indifferently-made adaptation has so little depth that it barely seems to give the source material a chance. Jason Robards continually snarls and flashes his teeth as Dr. Richard Diver (whom everyone ridiculously keeps referring to as 'Dick'); Jennifer Jones is the unstable wife he has 'cured'; Joan Fontaine is Jennifer's decadent sister; Jill St. John is a flirtatious actress out to stir up trouble in paradise. No one involved has the vaguest idea how to approach the material, least of all director Henry King, who allows his cast to visibly flounder. In a dated subplot, Robards, who has been treating a young homosexual, is accused by the boy's father of having similar inclinations, to which Robards responds like a rabid dog. It's too ludicrous to take seriously, and yet too limp and meandering to be passable as camp. The locales are nice and the Oscar-nominated title song is a big plus. Otherwise, an awfully long 'Night'. ** from ****

Neil Doyle Neither F. Scott Fitzgerald nor Ernest Hemingway ever have much luck in having their novels transferred to the screen with any degree of success. 'Tender in the Night' suffers from several things: the casting of leads (Jennifer Jones, Jason Robards, Jr.) and a weak script that never manages to make us believe the story's tragic overtones. And at 146 minutes, the film is rambling and overlong.Jennifer Jones is alienating in the principal feminine role as a neurotic and never manages to make us feel any sympathy for her character. Jason Robards, Jr. is physically miscast as Dick Diver and does not add to his reputation as a fine actor. Jones gives an odd, uneven performance with critics claiming that age was one of the factors for her failure to be convincing in the role--although Time magazine was impressed enough to give her a rather left-handed compliment: "She is well cast as a neurotic and does her best work in a decade." But the majority of critics were not favorably impressed.Whatever, the film did not reinforce her prestige as a box-office star as Selznick hoped. Joan Fontaine does fairly well as a sophisticated woman in a rather peripheral role that does not warrant star billing.And oddly enough, despite some lush location photography, everything about the "look" of the film seems artificial and stage bound. This artificial streak runs through the script too.