Directed by Jack Clayton
Starring Robert Redford, Sam Waterston, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern
8/10
It’s been almost a hundred years since F Scott Fitzgerald gave us his renowned story of the Jazz Age. I’ve read and enjoyed it twice over the years but avoided the movies. One made in the silent era has been lost. Another made in the forties and yet another made for television both sounded uninteresting. I happened upon the version made a half-century after the book came out – and a half-century ago. Glad I did.
The story is well known. Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston) rents a cottage on Long Island Sound next to a magnificent mansion owned by Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford) who hosts spectacular parties but remains oddly aloof from the well-heeled guests. Rumors abound that he’s a relative of the Kaiser, the scion of a wealthy Midwestern family, or a bootlegger – the lowest rung of nouveau riche to the upper crust, even though they imbibe frequently. (The latter story seems to be true.)
The story unfolds with lovely images, narration, and dialog and we learn Gatsby isn’t a vain hedonist. The lavish parties aren’t intended to aggrandize himself or extend his influence, they’re to attract a woman who lives in a mansion across the bay – Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow). Surely a woman of means would take note of the merriment and find reason to happen by one fine night.
Gatsby and Daisy were deeply in love prior to the Great War but someone of her breeding couldn’t marry a man of ordinary means. It just wasn’t done, old sport. So she weds Tom Buchanan of old money and new manners. After the war Gatsby determines to acquire wealth and win her back. Daisy submerges her feelings beneath a tide of frivolous consumption.
Carraway, Daisy’s cousin, arranges a meeting between her and Gatsby. Initially awkward, it eventually goes well. Love is rekindled, regular dalliances follow, and Gatsby’s hopes of having her back are promising. But an accident intervenes – perhaps Fitzgerald’s way of saying the war put romantic ideals behind us and uninspiring pursuits before us. At the end we meet Gatsby’s father, a haggard farmer from the Dakotas. Carraway is struck by his simple decency which of course contrasts with the deceit and decadence and dishonor of New York. The same notion is conveyed earlier by Carraway when he tells Gatsby, honestly if paradoxically, “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
The film is said to be slow, almost lifeless, but I’d say the director takes a leisurely pace and allows images and words to tell the story, much as Fitzgerald’s crafted prose did. Redford is excellent as the mysterious, evasive, but secretly romantic Jay Gatsby. Even at his most winsome he offers a note of dishonesty. Waterston does well too as the observer to events, eager to learn about his neighbor but not to benefit from him like the guests or undo him like Daisy’s husband. Roberts Blossom as Gatsby’s father from the prairie is moving in his few minutes at the end. “It just goes to show.”
I’m re-reading the book now, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
©2024 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to fellow Hoya Susan Ganosellis.