The Only Game in Town

...can now be held for the latter part of Elizabeth Taylors career. After The Taming of the Shrew(1967) it all seemed to go down hill. Check out any post Shrew movies and you will see what I mean. Here, in The Only Game, in Town Beatty and Taylor are jaded and cynical workers and lovers trying to escape Vegas, but both have their problems. Beatty is a compulsive gambler and Taylor is a cold fish unable to communicate love for fear of abandonment. It's a subtle love story and comedy that has some pretty good moments even though it runs a little slow. Don't expect anything amazing but its worth a look.

Seeing "The Only Game In Town" for the first time forty odd years after it was made is a very special treat for anyone who loves film and film history. This was going to be George Steven's last film. A great director, a pioneer. Here he's directing Elizabeth Taylor for the third time, after "A Place In The Sun" and "Giant". That alone makes "The Only Game In Town" a collector's piece. Elizabeth Taylor clearly trusted George Stevens completely and for good reason. She is spectacular. Every close up is like a personal, private experience. Warren Beatty is perfect here and he turned down "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid" to work with George Stevens. Good for him. A delicious treat.

Frank Gilroy's play brought to the screen by the great George Stevens; sadly, his last film. The maudlin characterizations by Liz and Warren just don't cut it, simply because they seem far too old and worldly to be victimized by the circumstances set forth for them. Old-fashioned in the worse way. Maurice Jarre provides one of his best scores, though.

The superficial values and emotional anguish that often permeate the world of gambling is captured by George Stevens in his final film.

Maurice Jarre's "bluesy" score (punctuated by a sorrowful trumpet) enhances the "downer" quality of this mundane drama.

It's understandable why Stevens saw something in this Frank D. Gilroy script, based upon his play. During this general period there were some pretty stark two-character plays being produced.

There was, for example, "Two for the Seasaw," "Silent Night, Lonely Night," "Husbands," and "Scenes from a Marriage." In this last film Ingmar Bergman laid bare a vacillating marriage-on-the brink, creating heart-breaking experience.

In "The Only Game in Town," two very good-looking actors try their hand at a challenging duo-character piece. It is said that "one-take" Frank Sinatra declined the role because he felt it might clash with Stevens' perfectionistic "multiple-take" approach. He was probably right.

The part then went to Warren Beatty, who tries very hard in what almost sounds like a Sinatra imitation (close one's eyes and listen to his timing and inflection). Elizabeth Taylor was apparently a favorite of the director, having utilized her talents successfully twice before. She invests her role with much energy and feeling.

However, the two, for all their earnest effort, create only a medium degree of "chemistry." Part of their lack of connection is in the script, which saddles Beatty's "ring-a-ding" character with an unrelenting degree of flippancy, right up to the last line. Taylor's role doesn't break any fresh dramatic ground, either.

Most people agree, though, that it's pretty hard to stop watching this, once one gets past the [characteristically slow Stevens] "late bedroom" -"morning after" scenes. While the presentation didn't exactly turn out to be the consummate emotional experience Stevens was obviously striving for, "The Only Game in Town" is still a most respectable piece of work.

With this opus, a great film director bid his final farewell to the medium.

Frank D. Gilroy adapted his unsuccessful two-act play about an aging Las Vegas showgirl (Elizabeth Taylor) who picks up the piano player (Warren Beatty) in a cocktail lounge one night after work. He's a gambler who can't be trusted with money; she's on the rebound after her married lover returned to his wife. It's an oddly old-fashioned tale with nothing particularly dramatic in the set-up; the pressing issues seem to be her loneliness and his need to win big. The critics pounced on the picture, not because of Gilroy's writing or George Stevens' direction or the performances--but because of the budget ($11M), inflated by Taylor's insistence the film's interiors be shot in Paris, France (so she could be close to husband Richard Burton). Despite the wigs and insistent soft-focus close-ups, Taylor comes close to finding an interesting character here; she isn't convincing as a showgirl (shot from the shoulders up), and she doesn't exactly sizzle with Beatty, but she's easily bruised and vulnerable, and lovely when she needs to be. Beatty (filling in for Frank Sinatra, who had prior commitments) plays his dryly sarcastic role with a touch of eccentricity; he's supposed to be younger and reckless, a wild card, but some scenes--like a hopeless fishing excursion at Lake Mead (using a green screen)--are beyond his control. The color scheme of Taylor's apartment (where we're stuck most of the time)--in avocado green and gold--isn't glamorous, but the rest of the movie is. Cinematographer Henri Decae gives the picture a touch of fake-Vegas sparkle which is appealing, and all the exteriors on-location look terrific (Las Vegas becomes a big, shiny department store). What doesn't work is the back-end of Gilroy's second act, wherein Taylor hesitates over Beatty's marriage proposal. Their conversation is supposed to be a dissection of why men and women marry, what keeps them together and why the participants eventually get restless--but it goes on and on, grinding the movie to a halt. Had Stevens (whose last film this was) given us something more--a final visual zinger or a twist--"The Only Game In Town" may actually be worth a second glance. As it is, it fades in the stretch as well as in the memory. **1/2 from ****