This is the kind of film - Billy Wilder's The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes is another - in which the Opening Credits montage is actually better than the film itself. The Wilder film was, of course, butchered and a whole central sequence jettisoned but so far as I know that didn't apply to Clayton's movie. It's flawed from the outset when the credits state unequivocally from the 'novel' by Scott Fitzgerald and if Francis Ford Coppola - who gets a sole writer credit - and Jack Clayton are unable to distinguish between a novel and a novella then they may just be the wrong creative team to be entrusted with one of the few authentic literary masterpieces of the twentieth century. The second - of three - adaptations, released in 1949 and featuring Alan Ladd as Gatsby has been cited as the finest version but until I am able to see for myself I can't comment. What is beyond dispute is that this is something of a Curate's egg - West or East, take your pick - with some aspects, like the aforementioned credit sequence which shows in succession all the key components; the Gatsby residence, the 'death' car, the pool where it all ends in tears, the lavishly appointed interior of Gatsby's mansion, the possessions, the portraits of Daisy etc, being more or less on the money whilst others - the casting of non-acting joke Mia Farrow as Daisy, for example, falling woefully short of adequate. Daisy needs to be an amalgam of Ava Gardner and Audrey Hepburn, a combination of the virginal and the carnal that would captivate just about any heterosexual male and render believable if not necessarily rational the lengths to which Gatsby was prepared to go to win her love. So many elements of the novel - the conflict between East and West, the equation of the green light at the end of Daisy's dock with money, the satire on Horatio Alger etc - are ignored, possibly on the grounds that these concepts are difficult to pictorialise but perhaps the greatest omission is the last magnificent paragraph of the book in which Nick speaks eloquently of boats and currents. Sam Waterston as Nick and Scott Wilson as Wilson (a part played in the Alan Ladd version by Howard Da Sylva who appears as Wolfsheim this time around) turn in the best performances with Redford just about adequate as Gatsby which is not really good enough for someone described as 'Great'.
Review of The Great Gatsby
