Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Edgar Soberon Torchia Under the firm hand of Henry King, known in his time as one of the best translators of literature into film, F.Scott Fitzerald's "Tender Is the Night" reaches its conclusion as a solid but rather cold drama. Produced with the usual ornaments of any Fox motion picture of those years, the shooting in real and colorful European locations and the vast CinemaScope compositions seem to go in opposite direction to the intimate drama with four key characters: a psychiatrist (Jason Robards), his patient and wife (Jennifer Jones), his old and wise mentor (Paul Lukas) and his rich sister-in-law (Joan Fontaine). Around them there are a frustrated composer (a very obnoxious character played by Tom Ewell, that guarantees that the title song is played endlessly), a starlet (Jill St. John), a wealthy Roman with nothing to do (Cesare Danova), and other characters that advance or retard the plot. There is not a single close-up in the film to get us close to those faces, not as a voyeuristic act to see their pores, wrinkles or grimaces, but as a most useful syntactic resource of cinema language. Everything is seen from a distance, with extreme prudence, aggravated by the fact that the film extends to 2 hours and 22 minutes that screenwriter Ivan Moffat should have prevented, or editor William Reynolds could have reduced. Maybe in a film house with a huge screen it worked better. After "Tender Is the Night" and 50 years in the film industry, Henry King retired from cinema.

Williliwaw Miss Jones returned to the screen after a 5 year absence and looked better in this film than she had in years..and gives a truly nuanced performance, edgy, beautiful, just perfect for the role of Nicole. She got beat up bad when it premiered saying she was too old for the part, seen today, she looks wonderful. Isn't that what acting is about? Does every actor have to be the exact age of the role played?The costumes for the film to me did not seem very authentic to the period but it wasn't David Selznick's fault...he carped, badgered and stormed 20th Century Fox with endless memo's about 'this and that'. If only had DOS made this film. It is like a baseball manager guiding the team from the locker room or worse the hotel room vs. the dugout.

briantaves TENDER IS THE NIGHT is best appreciated less as an adaptation of the Fitzgerald novel than as an original work. At the time it was made, 1962, many of Fitzgerald's themes were still considered beyond what would be allowed on the screen. Instead, producer David O. Selznick sought a vehicle to showcase his wife, actress Jennifer Jones, and other stars were cast who were not ideal representations of the characters Fitzgerald had imagined. Veteran director Henry King, whose career dated back to the 1910s, had a long tenure as the leading house director at Twentieth Century-Fox. With this film King for the first time had a producer who attempted to dictate how shooting should be done, and he and Selznick clashed. The resulting long film satisfied neither man, and it was the last film of both.Nonetheless, TENDER IS THE NIGHT, in its own right, memorably depicts the crumbling of a talented man of promising future, played by Jason Robards as therapist to wealthy Jones in a sanitarium. Against his better judgment, the two fall in love and he agrees to marry her, despite the breach of professional standards. Over the course of their marriage, Robards loses his intellectual drive and becomes increasingly dependent on Jones, who, although she had begun desperately needing his guidance and love, gradually transforms. Jones becomes a strong, independent woman, and ultimately leaves behind the man who began as her mentor but who has lost the very qualities which attracted her to him. Yet Jones's full recovery from sanitarium to be capable of life on her own is a result of the same marriage that proved disastrous for Robards, and the complex, shifting nature of power and ambition in their union, and its personal outcome, provides an absorbing, cautionary romantic parable.

Greg Couture When this was released I managed to see most films first-run, except the ones clearly aimed at my age group. (Such a snob, n'est-ce pas?!?) So, being a fan of both Jennifer and Joan, I went to a Los Angeles-area theater with top-notch projection and sound. Back then Twentieth-Century Fox rarely stinted on sending companies to the actual locales of the stories being filmed, so this one has plenty of its share of gorgeous shots set in Switzerland and elsewhere on the Continent, as I recall.But, as other comments herein attest, the rest is somewhat of a disappointment. Henry King, the director, seemed to encourage Jennifer Jones in some of her less-attractive mannerisms which somehow were not so apt as a rendition of her character's mental distress. Jason Robards, Jr. was never much of a success as a romantic lead, in my opinion. And Joan Fontaine was assigned the rather thankless role of a rich "bitch." All in all it's a prime example of how the studio "system" was growing out of touch with an ever-younger movie audience. Nevertheless for those of us who have always appreciated luxurious eye candy, it was a fairly tasty treat.