Directed by: Richard Brooks
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor, Kurt Kasznar

STORY

Paris has a way of holding on to memories — especially the ones you would give anything to change.
American journalist Charles Wills (Van Johnson) returns to Paris and finds himself haunted by the life he once shared there with the beautiful, impulsive Helen Ellswirth (Elizabeth Taylor). His memories carry him back to the exhilarating days following the liberation of Paris, when celebration filled the streets and a chance encounter with Helen changed the course of his life.

Charles and Helen fall deeply in love, marry, and begin building a life together. Charles dreams of becoming a successful novelist, but rejection and disappointment slowly take their toll. Then an unexpected financial windfall changes everything. Money brings freedom, but it also brings temptation, resentment and distance. The passionate marriage that once seemed unstoppable begins to fracture, with consequences neither Charles nor Helen can undo.
The Last Time I Saw Paris is more than a glamorous Hollywood romance. Beneath the Technicolor beauty is a bittersweet story about ambition, marriage, regret and the terrible realization that sometimes we understand what mattered most only after we've lost it.
And with Elizabeth Taylor lighting up Paris, it's awfully easy to understand why Charles never quite gets the city — or Helen — out of his heart.
AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

AINtoid: Fitzgerald Is Hiding Behind the Romance
The movie was loosely inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story “Babylon Revisited,” first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1931.
But Fitzgerald's story takes place in the aftermath of the roaring 1920s and deals with a man confronting the consequences of his earlier excesses. For the movie, the story was substantially transformed and moved forward into the years following World War II.
The filmmakers kept some of Fitzgerald's emotional DNA — Paris, memory, loss, guilt and a man trying to recover a life that has slipped away — while creating a much larger Hollywood romantic drama around it.
So while you're watching, look beneath the MGM glamour. There's a melancholy Fitzgerald heartbeat still beating underneath.

AINtoid: Some Serious Writing Talent
Richard Brooks didn't just direct the picture — he also worked on the screenplay.
The screen adaptation is credited to Brooks and the Epstein brothers, Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein, adapting Fitzgerald's story.
Classic-film fans may recognize those Epstein names immediately: Julius and Philip were also among the screenwriters responsible for one of Hollywood's most celebrated screenplays — Casablanca.
That's quite a literary pedigree hiding behind all those beautiful Parisian parties.

AINtoid: Elizabeth Taylor Was Only 22
It's easy to forget just how young Elizabeth Taylor was.
She was only 22 years old when The Last Time I Saw Paris was released, yet she had already spent much of her life in front of movie cameras.
Helen gave Taylor something considerably richer than simply being the beautiful woman in a romance. She's spontaneous, passionate, frustrating, vulnerable and ultimately tragic.
Watch Taylor carefully as the story darkens. The youthful radiance is still there, but we're beginning to see the emotionally complex dramatic actress who would dominate some of the biggest films of the following decade.

AINtoid: Van Johnson's MGM Farewell
Charles Wills became a particularly interesting role in Van Johnson's career because The Last Time I Saw Paris marked his final film under his longtime MGM contract.
Johnson had become one of MGM's enormously popular stars during the 1940s, particularly during the war years.
Here, however, audiences saw a more troubled and complicated Van Johnson. Charles isn't simply the charming romantic lead. He's ambitious, insecure, jealous, wounded and capable of making decisions he'll desperately regret.
It was quite a way to close an important chapter of his MGM career.

AINtoid: That Song Was Famous BEFORE the Movie
You might naturally assume that the song “The Last Time I Saw Paris” was written for this film.
Nope.

Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the song years earlier, and it appeared in the 1941 MGM musical Lady Be Good.
It even won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
More than a decade later, its evocative title became the title of this movie, and the melody became an important part of the film's musical identity.
So technically, the famous song didn't come from the movie.
The movie came from the famous song.

AINtoid: Wait — Is That Roger Moore?
Keep your eyes open for a very handsome young man named Paul Lane.
He's played by a then-little-known British actor named Roger Moore.
Yes.
THAT Roger Moore.

The future star of The Saint and eventual James Bond appears in an uncredited role in The Last Time I Saw Paris, generally regarded as his Hollywood film debut.
It's one of our favorite kinds of AIN Easter eggs: watching a future international superstar walk through a movie years before the world knew exactly who he was.
See if you can spot Bond before he became Bond.

AINtoid: MGM Glamour Was Working Overtime
The film was photographed in glorious Technicolor, with Oscar-winning cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg serving as director of photography.
And Elizabeth Taylor's gowns were designed by legendary MGM costume designer Helen Rose.
That combination matters.
Paris may provide the romantic fantasy, but MGM provides the visual polish. Taylor's costumes, the rich color photography and the elaborate interiors transform the story into exactly the kind of lavish romantic melodrama the studio knew how to make spectacular.
Even when this marriage is falling apart, it does so beautifully.

AINtoid: Paris Isn't Just the Setting
Watch how Paris functions throughout the film.
The city isn't merely someplace the characters happen to live. Paris becomes connected to Charles's memory of Helen — liberation, celebration, youth, possibility, love and eventually loss.
That's why the title carries so much weight.
When Charles remembers the last time he saw Paris, he's really remembering the last time he saw an entire version of his life.
And that may be the film's most Fitzgerald-like idea of all:
Sometimes the place we desperately want to return to isn't really a place.
It's a moment.
And moments don't wait for us.

AIN TREASURE CHEST: The Last Time I Saw Paris — a sweeping Technicolor romance filled with love, ambition, heartbreak, Fitzgerald echoes, Old Hollywood glamour... and even a future James Bond hiding in plain sight.