Thursday, June 3, 2010

The Okay Gatsby

I watched Jack Clayton's The Great Gatsby ('74) this past weekend starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, and I was actually mesmerized by the jazz-age production - specifically Douglas Slocombe's sparkling, milky soft-focus cinematography and Theoni V. Aldredge's costume design.

Other than that, it's a bit of a vacuous, lethargic thing with a bad performance by Mia Farrow and really no pulse or emotional pull-through to speak of. Like the guests at Gatsby's parties, its glamorous and glitzy but more than a bit flimsy.

2 comments:

  1. I just read The Great Gatsby and was planning to give this a watch sometime soon. Kind of ironic that you think Farrow struggles here, considering how good she was in "Rosemary's Baby."

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  2. It's really not all her fault, but essentially she's playing with the same anxiety and high-pitched emotion that she did as Rosemary.

    By the end of "The Great Gatsby," we're wondering why the hell he even bothers with Daisy, she's a shrieking mess.

    I haven't read the book since high school, but from what I hear the film version is very faithful to the plot elements of the book without any of the emotion, depth, nuance, etc. It's certainly worth a watch.

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