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3 , 15/4/2010
(Revisiting The Great Gatsby, 1974)
has been reduce and why? What has been changed from novel to film
narrative? What has been added and why?
2) Study of the apparent results of the transformation from verbal to visual
representation from telling to showing. What happens when words become
flesh, so to speak? Do we get a different impression of the characters of
the plot and the relationship between them when we can watch the
situations for ourselves, than, for example, when we are forced to rely on
the novels first person narrator?
3) Has the film adaptation tried to develop film equivalents to elements in
the novel that are not directly transferable? What has for example
happened to the interior monologues, to the shifting point of view of the
novel, to the poetic language of the book? Has the film used some of its
specific elements like music, light, color, camera movements, film editing
to compensate or perhaps even to create new aspects? Techniques (closeup, voice-over, etc)
4) An overview of the films main theme or themes compared with the
novels. How has the film in question interpreted the novel? What may be
the reasons for this choice? Has it perhaps to do with a modern reading of
an old story? Has gender anything to do with it female author, male
director, for example? How was racial and sexual identity represented?
The ending of Great Gatsby connects the novel with the American
history.
Importance of colors Green hope!
Yellow it spreads somehow death.
Gray Cynicism, moral corruption
Careless people, indifferent. (Semiotic analysis of the colors.)
Blue the sea
The moonlight
(Fred Marcus, 1971)
The Film
After a credit sequence montage of Gatsbys palatial, but vacant
house (including the fatal swimming pool), Jack Claytons 1974
adaptation, with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola gives us
some edited snippets of Nicks introduction to take us briskly into
the film.
Characters
GATSBY: While Redford wan an obvious box-office choice to play Gatsby,
having just come off huge successes in The Sting and The Way We Were,
he doesnt get Gatsby, choosing to play Gatsbys mysteriousness as
woodenness and aloofness. He looks fantastic in his Oscar-winning suits,
but its hard to care much about what comes out of his lock-jawed mouth.
DAISY: Mia Farrow is equally disappointing. In the book, Daisy has a
natural flirtatiousness that has been driving men wild for a decade.
In the film, Farrow comes across as nothing more than fragile and jittery.
She simply doesnt seem worth all the trouble men go to in pursuit of her
affections.
TOM: Bruce Dem is wiry and whiny. He has none of the looming physical
presence that supposedly makes Tom such a menacing figure.
CARRAWAY: Sam Waterston fares better. Nick is the narrator of both the
book and the movie, so he gets all the good speeches. Waterstons sad
eyes get sadder and sadder as Gatsbys tragic flaws propel him toward his
ugly fate.
New York Times on The Great Gatsby
An illustrated encyclopedia of the manners and morals of the 20s moves
spaniel-like through Fs text
Its faults:
1) Its all-too-reverential attitude. It completely mistakes the essence of Fs
novel, which is not in its story but in its elliptical literary style that dazzles
us by the manner in which it evokes character and event, rather than with
the characters and events themselves.
2) A stunning lack of cinematic imagination
Sadly, the movie treats Fs flawless novel as little more than a Jazzage costume drama and it goes heavy on the costumes, light on the
drama
A Summary of Events
1. Nick introduces himself as narrator as well as the Buchanans
2. Myrtle is introduced
3. Nick invited to GGs party
4. Drive to NY, some of GGs past. Jordan provides Daisys version of
the past.
5. The meeting at Nicks house. Reunion.
6. More about GGs past. GGs 2nd party.
7. The Plaza scene. Myrtles death.
8. More about GGs past. His romantic readiness and his death.
9. The funeral, the father the moment of vision
Chronology of Events
Few days before 4th July 1922, Nick spends an evening with Myrtle
and Tom
In Sept. GG is killed
Next class: Tuesday 20th April 2010. The Grapes of Wrath. (Read it even
with Sparknotes summaries)