A Midwesterner (Sam Waterston) becomes fascinated with his nouveau riche neighbor (Robert Redford),who obsesses over his lost love (Mia Farrow).

What we have here is a big name cast, though not as stylish as Baz Luhrmann's version forty years later. Luhrmann does seem to follow the same plot and use much of the same dialogue, suggesting at the least both enjoyed certain lines from the novel, or perhaps even that Luhrmann used this film as his cue. A few scenes, such as the clothes-tossing, seemed to be a direct borrowing. Also, Redford says "old sport" more naturally than Leonardo DiCaprio.

I have seen some criticism for this film being too literal. So, is being literal good or bad? I imagine if they strayed from the novel there would be just as many critics (or more) complaining... you just cannot win when adapting classic literature (though I personally loved this).

A great use of Karen Black. All I need to say.

The original script allegedly had homosexual undertones, and I think that comes through here. Also, when thinking of this as a tale from an unreliable narrator, it is interesting to wonder what is strictly true and what is puffed up from Nick's obsessive and doting point of view.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby may not quite be among the great literary classics, but it is a lovely book and a sentimental favourite. This film at least takes a noble stab adapting it, but it does come up well short. Its good points are really beautiful, but it does have too many flaws and it also comes across as flat. It is visually stunning with period detail most lavish and some of the loveliest photography of any 1970s period drama. The music is very authentic to the 1920s era and manages to be catchy and lushly orchestrated without being too glib or mushy. The Great Gatsby is also one of those films where the supporting performances are better than the leads with Sam Waterson and Scott Wilson giving the best performances. Waterson's Nick is like the glue of the storytelling and does it with charm, sympathy and dignity, while Wilson is very touching and haunting as Georhe, a very conflicted character. Karen Black has a ball, Lois Chiles is entrancing and witty(part of me thinks that she would have made for a better Daisy) and while Bruce Dern may not fit the role of Tom physically he is very oily and brutish and gets the attitude and mannerisms spot on. Aside from being too overlong and too leisurely paced, the major debits are the lacklustre leads and that it suffers from being too faithful, sorry about parroting what others have said but it just goes to show that it is the general consensus. Robert Redford is very handsome but his Gatsby rather uncharismatic and too restrained, while Mia Farrow is the anti-thesis, playing Daisy much too stridently that she comes across as irresponsible and annoying. The two don't have much chemistry between them either. Francis Ford Coppola's script and Jack Clayton's direction do deserve credit for making an effort to be faithful to the book, that's never been compulsory in adaptations but it does help. Sadly that doesn't work, an example of being too faithful suffering from sapping the life, passion or emotion out of the content. The script is far too dry and wordy, also more skimming-the-surface quality rather than having depth, and while Clayton does try to allow the drama breathe because the drama is so stillborn as a consequence of how it is written it comes across as too languid. All in all, very beautiful to watch and listen to with a good supporting cast but the lack of depth and the dull pacing as well as the leads being not up to the task it is also very flat. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Apparently there is some kind of unwritten rule that Jay Gatsby has to be played by a blond. So in three different sound versions of The Great Gatsby we've seen him played by Alan Ladd, Robert Redford, and Leonardo DiCaprio. And with that selection of players we get a different Gatsby in all of them.

You can barely catch a hint of Gatsby's plebeian origins in Redford's performance. He seems to the manor born, but his rise to the company of the movers and shakers of the Roaring Twenties puzzles all. He certainly keeps interesting company, he's about to go into business with Meyer Wolfsheim played here by Howard DaSilva who was F. Scott Fitzgerald's caricature of Arnold Rothstein.

Sam Waterston plays Nick Carraway an ambitious young man from the Midwest who happens to have a cousin in Daisy Buchanan married to the wealthy and ruthless Tom Buchanan. Tom's connections are going to see that Carraway will start rising on Wall Street. Daisy and Tom are played by Mia Farrow and Bruce Dern.

Waterston lives in a small cottage on Long Island which today would be astronomical in value given the area. Next door is the mansion of Jay Gatsby where it seems parties never stop. One night Waterston gets an invitation to meet his mysterious neighbor. And he discovers that cousin Daisy and Jay have some history.

Sometimes you can never go back and it's best to leave the past lay and push on ahead. Something that Redford just can't do as he tries to rekindle things with Farrow.

This Gatsby is one elegant film with Oscars for Costume Design and Best Musical Scoring. Given the music of the Roaring Twenties that he had to work with Nelson Riddle came up with great background sounds for the period. The film was also responsible for a bit of a revival of the Irving Berlin classic What'll I Do. The worst thing about the DiCaprio version was that ersatz rock score in that film. I so prefer this.

But I say each Gatsby to your respective taste.

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