The Great Gatsby (1974)

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Tara Lawrence-Stuart (Presently San Diego) | 12/04/2005 |
Great Gatsby movie 1974

A book such as THE GREAT GATSBY is always greater than any movie version. But like The Sun Also Rises, the actors in the 1974 version were in my opinion the best anyone could get. To those who would "pshaw" this, I ask: whom would you recommend over those in the 1974 version, such as they were, back then? As the book was short, almost a novella, so was the movie somehow self-contained. Sam Waterston WAS Nick who was a Wall Street bondsman who actually liked Gatsby, and who saw him for what he was and liked him the more for it. Karen Black WAS the abused, doomed Myrtle, wanting a puppy, and she bled in front of us from more than Tom's offhandedly breaking her nose. Gatsby was SUPPOSED to be self-aggrandizing and somehow elegant--but still, had "something gorgeous, a heightened sensitivity..." We see it right away, as he looks across the water at the green light on Daisy's dock. Yes, to me Redford got it right. Mia Farrow (even wearing that dull, stiff, lustereless blond wig) WAS the beautiful, spoiled, banal, careless, seemingly vacuous Daisy, whose voice was "full of money." Bruce Dern WAS Tom with "a cruel body", the "hulking" polo player who, I knew, would not be kind to animals; he WAS the arrogant, racist bully, so filthy rich he knew he'd hooked Daisy only on those grounds (a tearful, contrite Daisy spelling it out to Gatsby: "Rich girls don't marry poor boys!") She was Tom's prisoner, his property, obviously sophisticated ("GOD, I'm sophisticated!"). When weeping into those beautiful shirts, though, I was afraid Daisy would smear mascara all over them, didn't you, gals, think of that? Lois Chiles (where is she now?), THE perfect Jordan, with her shining rich-girl hair in vogue, was (though actualy she is the physical description of Fitzgerald's own Daisy) the low-voiced, wickedly whispering in Nick's ear, dishing the dirt, purring, totally careless. They got it down to the home plate, cameoing Marvin Hamlisch as the piano-playing Klipspringer.



To me, Farrow was SO close to being Daisy when she, in a tub, was momentarily free of Tom ("Tom who?") and in her exquisite picture hat and vapid expression, her Daisy came alive when in a perfect picture hat she drove up to Nick's humble home in a vintage car, asked Nick teasingly if he was in love with her, and was able to be witty and generous with herself (away from Tom) At the party, she was bold and funny in her sequined "flapper" cap and we all know she went off for awhile with Gatsby. In fact, all of the costuming (you can tell it means a lot to me) was authentic and nothing was overreaching. Eveyone looked comfortable, raucous, roaring.



Not so, to me, the 2000 series. Even with Mira Sorvino, it was too lengthy. The rather vague and unimpressive leading men (especially the Tom character)--had no punch. The Gatsby character was equally forgettable (I forget what he looked like) and the others (even Sorvino, who is a great acttress) were ho-hum, reciting their parts, overwhelmed and I think intimidated by the greatness of Fitzgerald that they seemed to know they couldn't meet the Fitzgerald criteria.



Yes, as Gatsby, Redford exuded the golden, understated yet contrived elegance and you knew that under that self-made man was simply a lover who wanted to BE someone greater than himself, just FOR someone else. You knew, and mourned Gatsby, even before he met his fate. He remained an enigma, even though Nick thought he'd figured him out. And when we meet his father, we finally know of the pothos--which led to the denouement of Gatsby who, Nick summed up early on, "turned out all right, after all." But that is just one opinion, old sport.

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