Elizabeth Taylor & Van Johnson in "The Last Time I Saw Paris" (1954) - Roger Moore's screen debut

As World War II ends in Europe, Stars and Stripes journalist Charles Wills (Van Johnson) roams the jubilant streets of Paris. A beautiful woman suddenly kisses him and vanishes into the crowd. At Café Dhingo, Charles meets Marion Ellswirth (Donna Reed), and their attraction is immediate. She invites him to join her family’s celebration of V-E Day, where Charles discovers the mystery woman was Marion’s younger sister, Helen (Elizabeth Taylor).

The sisters’ father, James Ellswirth (Walter Pidgeon), is a charming expatriate who embraced the Lost Generation after World War I and never left it behind. Flat broke but stylish, James raised Helen to live by her beauty and wit, while Marion seeks stability through respectable men like Claude Matine (George Dolenz), a devoted French prosecutor. Charles, a would-be novelist, falls hard for Helen, and after she survives a serious bout of pneumonia they marry and settle into a bohemian Paris life, eventually having a daughter, Vickie.

Money is scarce until long-dormant Texas oil fields James once bought suddenly strike oil. The fortune transforms their lives. Helen grows more responsible, while Charles quits journalism, parties recklessly, and drinks heavily as his novels are repeatedly rejected. Their marriage frays as Helen flirts with tennis star Paul Lane and Charles drifts into distractions of his own.

Helen, once carefree and indulgent, begins to crave stability and responsibility, while Charles sinks deeper into self-destruction, masking failure with charm and alcohol. James, amused by the spectacle, refuses to intervene, believing chaos to be a form of freedom. What once felt like romantic expatriate rebellion curdles into emotional neglect, with Charles increasingly absent as a husband and father, and Helen quietly realizing that love alone cannot rescue someone determined to drift.

After a bitter argument, Charles drunkenly chains the apartment door. Locked out in cold rain, Helen walks across Paris to Marion’s apartment, contracts pneumonia again, and dies. Grief-stricken Marion gains custody of Vickie, and Charles leaves France in disgrace.

Years later, sober and successful, Charles returns to Paris seeking his daughter. Marion refuses, still bitter over Helen’s death and Charles’ choices. Claude intervenes, forcing Marion to confront her resentment. At Café Dhingo, beneath a portrait of Helen, Marion relents. Outside, Vickie runs into Charles’ arms, and father and daughter walk away together.

A 1954 American Technicolor romantic drama directed by Richard Brooks, produced by Jack Cummings, screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Richard Brooks, cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor, Kurt Kasznar, George Dolenz, Roger Moore, Sandy Descher, Celia Lovsky, Peter Leeds, Dave Seville, John Doucette, and Odette Myrtil. Released by Loew's, Inc.

Filmed on locations in Paris and the MGM backlot.

Loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, "Babylon Revisited."

In March 1940, film producer Lester Cowan purchased the screen rights to F. Scott Fitzgerald's December 1930 short story "Babylon Revisited" for $1,000. Known for producing "My Little Chickadee" (1940) starring W.C. Fields and Mae West, Cowan planned to develop the film with Harry Cohn's Columbia Studios. In an unusual move, Cowan hired Fitzgerald himself to adapt his work. By August 1940, Fitzgerald completed his second draft, titled "Cosmopolitan", and included an author's note warning that, like "Rebecca" (1940) or "The Shop Around the Corner" (1940), the film adaptation should have no moral lessons whatsoever, leaving viewers to draw their own conclusions about the perils of excess in the Jazz Age. After Fitzgerald's death in December 1940, his screenplay adaptation failed to be produced, and Lester Cowan sold the screen rights to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Fourteen years later, following the revival of Fitzgerald's popularity as an author in the wake of World War II, MGM hired Philip G. Epstein, Julius J. Epstein and Richard Brooks to adapt the story. They changed the setting to post-World War II Paris and the main character of Charles Wills from an American businessman into an aspiring novelist

The film's title song, by composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, was already a classic when the movie was made and inspired the movie's title. Though the song had already won an Oscar after its film debut in "Lady Be Good" (1941), it is featured much more prominently here. It can be heard in many scenes, either being sung by Odette or being played as an instrumental.

It was a success at the box office. The film finished 36th for the year.

An engrossing, well-crafted, and enjoyable, if heavy-handed, romantic melodrama. The acting is good. Pidgeon steals the show as a penniless chancer who still manages to live the good life. Recommended for Elizabeth Taylor completists, and cinema history buffs.

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