DeNiro and Nicholson VS Mitchum and Curtis

The Last Tycoon is one of those interesting misfires. Directed by Elia Kazan -- the great director of the 50's(A Streetcar Named Desire; On the Waterfront) brought low by the blacklist(he talked) and struggling his way back. With a great cast , a period feeling (in a decade when period movies from The Sting to The Great Gatsby to The Way We Were were all the rage), a nice dollop of nudity and sex(mainly courtesy of "discovery" Ingrid Boulting) and, perhaps above all, one of those fine "inside looks" at movie-making, from the writer's room to the soundstage to the rushes to the premiere.

But in a decade that gave us a lot of classics, The Last Tycoon isn't one of them. Interesting, yes. Classic, no.

It looks like the main claim to fame for The Last Tycoon is that it will be the only movie that gives us Robert DeNiro and Jack Nicholson on screen together and acting against each other. (Alas, it looks like we will never get the match-up of Nicholson and Pacino on screen together, though DeNiro has acted with both of them.)

The sequence is a bit of a cheat. Three back-to-back scenes, two at the home of DeNiro's father in law(studio head Robert Mitchum) , one in between at a Hollywood restaurant. Its good stuff -- DeNiro's studio head of production hates Nicholson's openly Communist writers' organizer -- and it leads to fisticuffs.

But Nicholson isn't in the movie very long (he did his cameo as a favor to producer Sam Spiegel in return for parties on Spiegel's yacht), and DeNiro, back then, could be rather boring when he wasn't being psychotic.

Also: seeing Nicholson and DeNiro on screen together in 1976 is one of those sad, wistful time machine experiences: both decades younger than today, DeNiro whippet thin in body and face, Nicholson pretty thin himself(for Nicholson) and milking both that great smile and his "early period" twang and sass(as he aged, Nicholson would go more for stereophonic vocal weirdness.) As always with these star match-ups, we play our favorites. Me, I always found DeNiro a bit dumb, mean and inaccessible as a movie star. Nicholson's a lot more fun -- and seductive to all sexes in voice and manner.

MEANWHILE: With DeNiro and Nicholson on display as perfect specimens of "the New Hollywood 70's star," we have two representatives of an earlier era proving why THEY are stars.

One is Robert Mitchum , who -- like Nicholson, and not like DeNiro - used his very distinctive bullfrog-deep voice to power a decades-long career: as with Nicholson, the voice stayed young and exciting even as the face of the man aged.

The other is Tony Curtis, whose stardom was actually short-lived(about two decades from the fifties through the sixties) but has enough classics on HIS resume that to see him here is to be reminded of his own pretty-boy with an edge star power. Curtis was quite handsome still in 1976(and capable in one scene of taking off his shirt to show a still fit and muscular torso), but he does look at a photo of Young Tony Curtis on a studio office wall in one scene and smiles at the loss of youth. (Curtis here is playing a top but aging matinee idol star in trouble...kind of playing himself.)

Though DeNiro is the focus of The Last Tycoon(fatally so when the movie leaves all the Hollywood politics to focus on his ill-fated love affair with the woman who reminds him of his dead wife; see: Vertigo), its much more fun to watch the movie as a "comparison of stars of the decades." The main event is DeNiro and Nicholson VS Mitchum and Curtis, but Old Hollywood is also represented by Dana Andrews(as a director fired off a movie by DeNiro) and John Carradine(father of all those Carradine brothers, but his own spooky, raven-like entity.) And you've got Jeanne Moreau -- more New Wave than New Hollywood -- acting and dueling with Curtis in a love story played by actors who hate each other.

Can't forget Ray Milland, either -- in bald old age but formidable, and paired with Mitchum as two powerful Old Guard Hollywood guys who DeNiro simply can't overcome.

The Last Tycoon is, in the final analysis, a very interesting film to watch for the comparative star power over the decades all on screen together but -- in the end, you only get a classic if you truly tell a classic story or in a classic cinematic way. Nicholson, DeNiro, Mitchum, Curtis, Milland got to do that...but not in this movie.