Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Gene D. Phillips

Critical Essay by Gene D. Phillips

SOURCE: "Paradise Lost: 'The Last of the Belles' and The Last Time I Saw Paris," in Fiction, Film, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Loyola University Press, 1986, pp. 47-61.

In the following excerpt, Phillips compares "Babylon Revisited" with a screenplay that Fitzgerald adapted from the story and with a film that was loosely based on the story. Phillips remarks that the quality of the story suffers with each successive adaptation.

"babylon Revisited": the Short Story

The last time that a Fitzgerald short story was made into a full-length movie for theatrical release, rather than dramatized for television, was in 1954 when MGM produced the movie version of "Babylon Revisited," which was entitled The Last Time I Saw Paris. Even though this film was produced long before the teleplay of "The Last of the Belles" . . . , the short story on which The Last Time I Saw Paris is based takes place during the depression...
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