Le Dernier Nabab

De Niro was an unexpected surprise as Monroe Starr in this brilliant adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished last novel. He gives a thoughtful, sensitive, and intelligent performance as this character, who was modeled on MGM producer, Irving Thalberg. Fitzgerald wrote about Hollywood from the inside, and from the perspective of someone who was destroying himself by being inside. He could ask for nothing better than to have English playwright Harold Pinter create this stark, human screenplay and then have Elia Kazan realize it.

In addition to De Niro's definitive performance, we get a series of perfect cameos (usually an impossibility) from Tony Curtis, Jeanne Moreau, Robert Mitchum, and others. We also get two screen debuts of merit -- Angelica Huston (in a small, but memorable scene) and an excellent Teresa Russell as Starr's would-be sweetheart. The critics hated the movie, and it did poorly in box offices, but it was truly, like Fitzgerald himself, an American masterpiece.