BEFORE: Let's keep the literary theme going - I'm following a film based on a Tennessee Williams play with one based on that book by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I watched the 2013 DiCaprio version last August, and it would have been great to watch them back to back, especially since Leo linked to Bruce Dern via "Django Unchained", and I then watched "Coming Home" - so this could have fit right in. I was sure that TCM would run this while the 2013 version was in theaters, but I guess they don't work that way. They held back until Redford was the Artist of the Month, which was in January 2015.
I just couldn't wait any longer for this version, and the DiCaprio chain came up, so I forged ahead. Finally I can follow up tonight, I'll start by re-reading my review of the 2013 version.
THE PLOT: A Midwesterner becomes fascinated with his nouveau riche neighbor, who obsesses over his lost love.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Great Gatsby" (2013) (Movie #1,813)
AFTER: It's also all about the real estate lately, with the NYC apartment seen in "Barefoot in the Park", the vagaries of a boarding house in "This Property Is Condemned", and tonight I'm back at the fabulous Long Island mansions in the fictional West Egg. Another connection with last night's film, both films had a writer complain about the adaptation - Francis Ford Coppola wrote the second version of this screenplay (taking over from Truman Capote), and Coppola then claimed that the director, Jack Clayton, paid no attention to his script.
After watching the DiCaprio version, I pegged Jay Gatsby as an idol with feet of clay, someone who became successful, but perhaps by nefarious methods, in order to win a woman's love. The way Leo played him, he seemed devoted to Daisy, almost to a fault, but also full of self-loathing for not being worthy, in addition to being misguided and mistakenly optimistic. Daisy came off as shallow, selfish, cowardly and deceptive.
What's strange is that I didn't get much of those qualities from Redford and Farrow here. Sure, Gatsby's still optimistic, pining for a woman who's married to someone else, but questions about his past and how he made his fortune are mostly shrugged off this time, and it's hard for me to think of Redford as an evil character, even though I know he's played bank robbers and escaped convicts, and such. He's usually so darn likable, and it was much easier to imagine that DiCaprio's Gatsby had a dark side. Farrow's Daisy, meanwhile, seems on the meek side, and she's rich so shallowness comes along with that, but I didn't get selfish or deceptive from her. It just seemed like she loved both Gatsby and her husband, and was unable to make that leap to divorce her husband. Cursed love triangles...
There's no doubt about Tom Buchanan, though - Daisy's romance with Gatsby seems downright noble compared to Tom's long-term affair with Myrtle Wilson. He's got the beautiful wife, but that's not enough, he's making plans to run away with his mistress, or at least that's what he's telling her, while he keeps promising to sell his car to her husband, but never really gets around to doing it. For bonus points he's a woman-beater AND a racist, so I sort of picked up on the fact that we're not supposed to like him much.
What I didn't like about the 2013 version was the inclusion of modern music (the 1974 version is much more faithful, using appropriate period songs) and the framing device of putting Nick Carraway in rehab, where he starts to write his story into a novel - it's a worn-out convention, and it was completely unnecessary. The 1974 version is a perfect example of how you can just tell a story with no framing device, where the scenes are all in proper chronological order, and that's perfectly OK. Less dramatic perhaps, but we all know that Nick's the narrator, we don't need that point driven home, and we certainly don't need to see someone WRITING long-hand to know we're about to see their story.
But that said, the 2013 version used special effects to make Gatsby's mansion and his parties more grand, with elaborate musical numbers that put the 1974 scenes of people dancing the Charleston to shame. The effects also recreated the NYC skyline of the time, and made that ashy area around the gas station that much more bleak - so in the end, one version had more flash, the other version had more substance - so my rating ends up being the same, but it's a shame neither version had both things.
Also starring Mia Farrow (last seen in "Miami Rhapsody"), Sam Waterston (last seen in "September"), Bruce Dern (last seen in "Coming Home"), Karen Black (last seen in Family Plot"), Scott Wilson, Lois Chiles (last seen in "Moonraker"), Howard Da Silva, Roberts Blossom (last seen in "Doc Hollywood"), with a cameo from Edward Herrmann (last seen in "The Purple Rose of Cairo").
RATING: 5 out of 10 puppies in a box
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