In Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Richard Brooks demonstrated a keen eye for directing a female star (Diane Keaton) in a complex psychological role exploring sexual and relationship mores at a time when such values were being radically redefined. Brooks is much less well known, however, for earlier films exploring similar discontents arising from women's liberation, such as The Happy Ending (1969). In that film, he directed Jean Simmons in a role that explored marriage and motherhood at a time when the U.S. was still coming to terms with the impact of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). Over a decade before that, in The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), Elizabeth Taylor played a woman caught in the vicissitudes of a relationship unsettled by shifting assumptions about a woman's role in postwar society. In Paris, Brooks's use of costume and color accentuated a counterthrust to the story's Fitzgeraldian literary roots about a husband “cracking up,” placing emphasis on the frustrations of Taylor's spirited wife. In Happy Ending, Brooks used narrative focalization through memory and escapist fantasy to centralize Simmons's (Oscar-nominated) performance, providing an emotional heft to a story about a woman demanding more from life and marriage. While both films anticipated Brooks's more famous Goodbar, they each warrant attention as signal works exploring the psychological and emotional depth of women reflecting—even anticipating—shifts in gender politics to come.

BABYLON REVISITED

By the time it was republished in the short-story collection Taps at Reveille (1935), F. Scott Fitzgerald's “Babylon Revisited” (1931) was already being considered among his finest pieces of short fiction. The story introduces an alcoholic American businessman, Charlie Wales, on his return to Paris shortly after the 1929 crash in which he lost all his money. Now sober and successful in a new business, Charlie has returned to Paris to be reunited with his daughter, Honoria, who has been living under the guardianship of his sister-in-law, Marion, following his mental collapse and the death of his estranged wife, Helen. As he prepares to win Marion over and convince her of his trustworthiness, Charlie reflects on the two years he wasted in Paris drinking and partying. He is unsurprised to find Marion bitter and reluctant to part with the child, and still blaming him for her sister's death.