October 28, 1985—Fittingly enough, the major adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel about American expatriates, Tender Is the Night, concluded on Britain’s BBC-2, but with additional international financing from Twentieth-Century Fox and the American cable network Showtime, which had only begun showing the series in the U.S. the day before. The six-part miniseries, scripted by Dennis Potter (of “The Singing Detective” fame) and starring Peter Strauss and Mary Steenbergen (both in the image accompanying this post) as the seemingly fortunate couple Dick and Nicole Diver, won justifiable critical acclaim as one of the best translations of the author’s work to the big (or, in this case, small) screen.
An earlier 1962 film adaptation of this novel about "emotional bankruptcy" in the Roaring Twenties, starring Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones as the talented young psychiatrist and the beautiful patient whom he marries, was considered, like most other adaptations of Fitzgerald works, unsuccessful. Director Henry King was a competent enough veteran, but his adaptations of other literary masterworks (e.g., Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and novel The Sun Also Rises), had never really suggested the magic of the originals.
King wasn’t helped as he tackled this most promising but problematic Fitzgerald novel. He had to tread lightly over a plot element still considered too hot to handle by censorship codes of the time—the sexual abuse by Nicole’s father—and had to make do with Robards--who, despite considerable acting skill, was not really a box-office draw--after Jones’ original choice for her co-star, William Holden, proved unavailable.
I saw the Showtime production not during its initial run, but two decades later, at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan. To my knowledge, it has not been shown on American TV in years. More’s the pity that more people haven’t been exposed to it—or that neither the traditional broadcast networks nor PBS have aired any comparably ambitious adaptations of this kind recently of other great literary works.
Strauss and Steenbergen were fine indeed in limning the flaws beneath the surface of their seemingly golden couple, and the supporting cast—including Ed Asner, Sean Young, John Heard, and Piper Laurie—were also exceedingly well-cast. But I think much of the power of this production came from Potter’s decision to dispense with a time-honored cinematic device: the flashback.
Fitzgerald himself had tried this—much of the second third of his book was one long flashback. But initial readers were so flummoxed by the structure that after publication, he said that if he’d only had one more crack at it, he might have been able to lick its organizational problems. Many people—myself included—feel that Potter did just that, by following the chronological reorganization of the book (based on Fitzgerald’s notes) performed by critic Malcolm Cowley in 1951.
True, the shock and mystery present at the end of Fitzgerald’s Book One, when starlet Rosemary Hoyt finds Nicole in the midst of a nervous breakdown, is now gone. But in its place is a more logical treatment of the complex relationship between Dick and Nicole, and one that makes more heartbreaking the end of their love.
A beautifully rendered scene from the miniseries occurs when Dick takes Rosemary and some other friends to the cemetery holding the remains of thousands of casualties at the Battle of the Somme. In somber tones, Strauss recites some of the most moving dialogue in the novel, with one line in particular summing up how this battle, like others from World War I, produced the disillusionment that haunted Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other members of the “Lost Generation”: “All my beautiful lovely safe world blew itself up here with a great gust of high explosive love."
An earlier 1962 film adaptation of this novel about "emotional bankruptcy" in the Roaring Twenties, starring Jason Robards and Jennifer Jones as the talented young psychiatrist and the beautiful patient whom he marries, was considered, like most other adaptations of Fitzgerald works, unsuccessful. Director Henry King was a competent enough veteran, but his adaptations of other literary masterworks (e.g., Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and novel The Sun Also Rises), had never really suggested the magic of the originals.
King wasn’t helped as he tackled this most promising but problematic Fitzgerald novel. He had to tread lightly over a plot element still considered too hot to handle by censorship codes of the time—the sexual abuse by Nicole’s father—and had to make do with Robards--who, despite considerable acting skill, was not really a box-office draw--after Jones’ original choice for her co-star, William Holden, proved unavailable.
I saw the Showtime production not during its initial run, but two decades later, at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan. To my knowledge, it has not been shown on American TV in years. More’s the pity that more people haven’t been exposed to it—or that neither the traditional broadcast networks nor PBS have aired any comparably ambitious adaptations of this kind recently of other great literary works.
Strauss and Steenbergen were fine indeed in limning the flaws beneath the surface of their seemingly golden couple, and the supporting cast—including Ed Asner, Sean Young, John Heard, and Piper Laurie—were also exceedingly well-cast. But I think much of the power of this production came from Potter’s decision to dispense with a time-honored cinematic device: the flashback.
Fitzgerald himself had tried this—much of the second third of his book was one long flashback. But initial readers were so flummoxed by the structure that after publication, he said that if he’d only had one more crack at it, he might have been able to lick its organizational problems. Many people—myself included—feel that Potter did just that, by following the chronological reorganization of the book (based on Fitzgerald’s notes) performed by critic Malcolm Cowley in 1951.
True, the shock and mystery present at the end of Fitzgerald’s Book One, when starlet Rosemary Hoyt finds Nicole in the midst of a nervous breakdown, is now gone. But in its place is a more logical treatment of the complex relationship between Dick and Nicole, and one that makes more heartbreaking the end of their love.
A beautifully rendered scene from the miniseries occurs when Dick takes Rosemary and some other friends to the cemetery holding the remains of thousands of casualties at the Battle of the Somme. In somber tones, Strauss recites some of the most moving dialogue in the novel, with one line in particular summing up how this battle, like others from World War I, produced the disillusionment that haunted Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other members of the “Lost Generation”: “All my beautiful lovely safe world blew itself up here with a great gust of high explosive love."
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