Movie Review by Greg GoodsellDirected by Henry King
Seemingly overnight, flappers and wild parties gave way to bread lines and soup kitchens. Formerly charming European vistas became populated with sinister figures intent in pulling the rest of the world into war and chaos. Jazz age novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald (Gregory Peck) found himself suddenly irrelevant in 1930s America. Needing quick cash to pay for his wife Zelda’s sanitarium bills and his daughter’s private education, Fitzgerald turned to Hollywood to begin his disastrous career as a screenwriter. While in Tinseltown, Fitzgerald would fall in love with second-string gossip columnist Sheilah Graham (Deborah Kerr), who, Jay Gatsby-like had invented an upper class British background to conceal her childhood poverty. Their affair would be tempestuous, but unable to conceal the fact that literary great Fitzgerald was in irreversible decline …
Beloved Infidel, based on Graham’s memoir, is best appreciated for what it is than what it is not. The adaptation is brave in addressing some highly adult subject matter for its time, such as adultery, alcoholism and failure. Above all else, Beloved Infidel is yet another big-budget weepie like those being churned out by director Douglas Sirk at Universal Studios, strictly intended for 1950s moms escaping household drudgery at a matinee.