Tender Is the Night

Scott Fitzgerald drew on his own experience of his marriage with Zelda to paint this haunting and often frightening portrait of a relationship foundering on the rocks of social and financial success. Peter Strauss gives a career best performance as Dick Diver, a successful psychiatrist, who can't do a thing to prevent the alcohol-fuelled mental decline of his wife (Mary Steenburgen). There are moments of sheer Fitzgerald brilliance, for example, the speech given by Diver to friends at a candle-lit dinner party in front of his Cote d'Azure villa. The supporting cast is fine, including a then little known Jean Reno who's since gone on to do worse things.

I really enjoyed this series (but then I am Fitzgerald buff). I remember being a bit disappointed that Mary Steenburgen didn't quite look like the Nicole I imagined in my head, but it was well done nonetheless. It seems that I'm not alone in wanting to own a copy but as its 20 years old I don't suppose we'll ever be gratified by its availability again (or even a repeat on the telly!). The original was a long book with a complex storyline; the book starts kind of in the middle of the story and skips to past and future .....whereas I remember this being somewhat rearranged into strict chronology, which, to some extent, ruined the effect of the literary version which started with the sparkling pinnacle of the Divers life before exploring how they got there and how they ended up. Despite all this it was a pretty good version...... Maybe Hollywood should make this story again..... for the third time ...

Fitzgerald's works have suffered almost as badly as Faulkner's in movie and TV adaptations, but this miniseries captures the inconsolable sadness of his most moving book. Mary Steenburgen's extraordinary performance not only makes Nicole comprehensible (which she wasn't always in the novel, where we see her through her husband's eyes) but lends her a warmth and sweetness that make her fate almost unbearable. It's a pity this isn't better known.