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Home , Bernice Bobs Her Hair, The Great Gatsby, The New Lassie

November 26, 2013 (XXVII:14) , (2013, 143 min)

Directed by Baz Luhrmann Written by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce (screenplay) Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald (novel) Cinematography by Simon Duggan

Jason Clarke...George Wilson ...Jordan Baker Leonardo DiCaprio... Joel Edgerton...Tom Buchanan Isla Fisher...Myrtle Wilson ... Carraway ... Jack Thompson...Dr. Walter Perkins

BAZ LUHRMANN (Director, Writer—screenplay) (b. Mark Anthony Luhrmann, September 17, 1962 in New South Wales, Australia) has directed five features, all of which he also wrote: 2013 The Great Gatsby, 2008 Australia, 2001 Moulin Rouge!, 1996 Romeo + Juliet, and 1992 Strictly Ballroom. He also directed eight shorts, all of which (but on Schiaparelli) he F. Scott Fitzgerald (Writer—novel)(b. Francis Scott Key also wrote: 2012 Hard Chic, 2012 Naïf Chic, 2012 Schiaparelli Fitzgerald, September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, —d. & Prada: Impossible Conversations, 2012 The Classical Body, December 21, 1940 (age 44) in Hollywood, , 2012 The Exotic Body, 2012 The Surreal Body, 2012 Ugly Chic, California) worked in Hollywood for several years as a and 2012 Waist Up/Waist Down. He also produced four of his screenwriter. Many of his novels and short stories were made features: 2013 The Great Gatsby, 2008 Australia, 2001 Moulin into films, some of which are 2013 The Great Gatsby (novel), Rouge!, and 1996 Romeo + Juliet. He did ballroom dance as a 2012 The Lost Decade (Short, story), 2010 The Beautiful and child, taught by his mother. In 2004 Luhrmann directed the Damned (novel), 2008 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button world’s most expensive ad for Chanel No 5 with Nicole Kidman, (short story), 2000 “The Great Gatsby” (TV Movie, novel), 1987 a 4-minute short titled “No. 5: The Film..” His favorite films are “Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Pat Hobby Teamed with Star 80 (1983), 8 ½ (1963), War and Peace (1966). Medium Genius” (TV Movie, stories), 1985 (TV Cool (1969) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). He said about Gatsby: Mini-Series, novel), 1976 (novel), 1976 ”The novel wasn’t set in a period called ‘The Minimal Twenties’. “” (TV Movie, story), 1974 The Great It was called ‘The ’. So it had to roar.” And: Gatsby (novel), 1962 Tender Is the Night (novel), 1959 The Last “I thought if I could crack the inner voice of Nick, there was a Tycoon (novel), 1958 The Great Gatsby (novel), 1957 The Last movie to be made.” Tycoon (novel), 1956 The Young and the Beautiful (story), 1955 The Great Gatsby (novel), 1951 The Last Tycoon (book The Love CRAIG PEARCE (Writer—screenplay) has six screenplay of the Last Tycoon), 1956 Winter Dreams (story), 1955 Tender Is credits, all of them with Luhrmann: 2013 The Great Gatsby, the Night (novel), 1954 The Last Time I Saw Paris (story), 1949 2010 Charlie St. Cloud, 2009 “The 81st Annual Academy The Last Tycoon (novel), 1951 Bernice Bobs Her Hair (story), Awards” (TV Special), 2001 Moulin Rouge!, 1996 Romeo + 1949 The Great Gatsby (novel), 1926 The Great Gatsby (novel), Juliet, and 1992 Strictly Ballroom. 1924 Grit (story), 1922 (novel), 1920

Luhrman—THE GREAT GATSBY—2

The Husband Hunter (story "Myra Meets His Family"), and 1920 ISLA FISHER...Myrtle Wilson (b. Isla Lang Fisher, February 3, The Chorus Girl's Romance (story "Head and Shoulders"). 1976 in Muscat, Oman) has appeared in 37 films and television shows, some of which are 2013 Life of Crime, 2013 Arrested JASON CLARKE...George Wilson (b. July Development (TV Series, 9 episodes), 2013 17, 1969 in Winton, Queensland, Now You See Me, 2013 The Great Gatsby, Australia) has appeared in 54 films and 2011 “Bored to Death” (TV Series), 2009 television shows, including 2014 Dawn of Confessions of a Shopaholic, 2008 the Planet of the Apes (post-production), Definitely, Maybe, 2005 Wedding Crashers, 2014 Child 44 (post-production), 2014 2004 I Heart Huckabees, 2003 The Knight of Cups (post-production), 2013 Wannabes, 2002 Scooby-Doo, 2000 Out of The Better Angels, 2013 White House Depth, 1994-1997 “Home and Away” (TV Down, 2013 The Great Gatsby, 2012 Zero Series, 345 episodes), and 1993 “Paradise Dark Thirty, 2012 Lawless, 2011 Beach” (TV Series). Killing Fields, 2011 Yelling to the Sky, 2010 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, TOBEY MAGUIRE... (b. 2009 Public Enemies, 2006-2008 Tobias Vincent Maguire, June 27, 1975 in “Brotherhood” (TV Series, 29 episodes), Santa Monica, California) has appeared in 2008 The Human Contract, 2004 Get Rich 47 films and television shows, including Quick, 2003 “Farscape” (TV Series), 2002 2013 Labor Day, 2013 The Great Gatsby, “The Outsider” (TV Movie), 2002 “Home 2013 “The Spoils of Babylon” (TV Mini- and Away” (TV Series), 2002 Rabbit- Series, 6 episodes), 2009 Brothers, 2007 Proof Fence, 2000 Better Than Sex, 2000 Spider-Man 3, 2004 Spider-Man 2, 2003 Our Lips Are Sealed, 1998 Praise, and Seabiscuit, 2002 Spider-Man, 2000 Wonder 1997 Dilemma. Boys, 1999 Ride with the Devil, 1999 The Cider House Rules, 1998 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1997 ELIZABETH DEBICKI...Jordan Baker (b. August 1990 in Paris, Deconstructing Harry, 1997 The Ice Storm, 1994 Healer, 1994 France) has appeared in 4 films: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Revenge of the Red Baron, 1993 This Boy's Life, 1992 “Great (filming), 2013 Goedel, Incomplete (Short), 2013 The Great Scott!” (TV Series, 13 episodes), 1991 “Roseanne” (TV Series), Gatsby, and 2011 A Few Best Men. 1991 “Blossom” (TV Series), 1990 “1st & Ten: The Championship” (TV Series), and 1988 “The Twilight Zone” (TV LEONARDO DICAPRIO...Jay Gatsby (b. Leonardo Wilhelm Series). DiCaprio, November 11, 1974 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) has appeared in 35 films and television shows, among CAREY MULLIGAN...Daisy Buchanan (b. Carey Hannah them 2013 The Wolf of Wall Street, 2013 The Great Gatsby, Mulligan, May 28, 1985 in Westminster, , England) 2012 Django Unchained, 2011 J. Edgar, 2010 Inception, 2010 has appeared in 23 films and TV shows, including 2014 Far from Shutter Island, 2008 , 2006 Blood Diamond, the Madding Crowd (filming), 2013 Inside Llewyn Davis, 2013 2006 The Departed, 2004 The Aviator, 2002 Catch Me If You The Great Gatsby, 2011 Shame, 2011 Drive, 2010 Never Let Me Can, 2002 Gangs of New York, 1998 The Man in the Iron Mask, Go, 2010 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, 2009 Brothers, 2009 1997 Titanic, 1996 Marvin's Room, 1996 Romeo + Juliet, 1995 Public Enemies, 2009 The Greatest, 2007 “Doctor Who” (TV The Quick and the Dead, 1993 What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Series), 2007 “Waking the Dead” (TV Series), 2006 “The 1993 This Boy's Life, 1991-1992 Growing Pains (TV Series, 23 Amazing Mrs. Pritchard” (TV Series, 6 episodes), 2005 “Bleak episodes), 1992 “Poison Ivy” (TV Series, 12 episodes), 1990 House” (TV Mini-Series, 15 episodes), and 2005 Pride & “The Outsiders” (TV Series), and 1989 “The New ” (TV Prejudice. Series). He also produced 12 films, among them 2013 The Wolf of Wall Street, 2013 Runner Runner, 2004 The Aviator, and 2004 JACK THOMPSON...Dr. Walter Perkins (b. John Hadley Payne, The Assassination of Richard Nixon. August 31, 1940 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) has appeared in 104 films and television shows, among them 2013 JOEL EDGERTON...Tom Buchanan (b. June 23, 1974 in Around the Block, 2013 Mystery Road, 2013 The Great Gatsby, Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia) has appeared in 60 2010 Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, 2008 Australia, 2008 films and TV shows, including 2014 Exodus (filming), 2014 Leatherheads, 2006 The Good German, 2004 The Assassination Jane Got a Gun (post-production), 2013 Felony, 2013 The Great of Richard Nixon, 2002 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Gatsby, 2012 Zero Dark Thirty, 2011 The Cartographer (Short), Clones, 1997 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1996 2011 Warrior, 2008 Acolytes, 2008 The Square, 2007 Whisper, Last Dance, 1996 “The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years” (TV 2007 “Dangerous” (TV Series, 8 episodes), 2006 Smokin' Aces, Movie), 1995 Flight of the Albatross, 1993 A Far Off Place, 2005 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, 2004 King 1988 “Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun” (TV Movie), Arthur, 2003 Ned Kelly, 2001-2002 The Secret Life of Us (TV 1983 Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, 1982 “A Woman Called Series, 32 episodes), 2002 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Golda” (TV Movie), 1982 The Man from Snowy River, 1980 Clones, 2000 Sample People, 1998 Praise, 1997 “Big Sky” (TV Breaker Morant, 1979 The Journalist, 1978 The Chant of Jimmie Series), and 1996 Race the Sun. Blacksmith, 1976 Caddie, 1970-1974 “Homicide” (TV Series), 1971-1973 “Spyforce” (TV Series, 42 episodes), 1973 Libido, Luhrman—THE GREAT GATSBY—3

1970 “Silo 15” (TV Movie), 1970 “The Rovers” (TV Series), weren’t much interested in well-wrought narratives about the rich 1969 “Riptide” (TV Series), and 1968 “Motel” (TV Series). and rich-wannabes. When Fitzgerald died at the age of 44 in 1941, not one of his books was in print. The obituaries triggered a resurgence F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, was published in of interest in his work. “Between 1941 and 1949,” writes critic 1925. It was an immediate success, it became a stage play, there and Fitzgerald biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli, “seventeen new was a film (now lost, though the trailer is available in the Library editions or reprints of The Great Gatsby were published.” (3) of Congress), and there were several more film and television Members of the military received 155,000 free copies. In 1946, versions, all of them lousy in various ways. The first film version the poet John Berryman called it a “masterpiece”. “Before The to have gotten it right is the one we’re showing this week in BFS, Great Gatsby became a required textbook in the fifties and Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 version. The problem with all the film sixties,” writes Bruccoli, “some half million copies were in the (and stage and ) versions is, not one of them before hands of readers who were reading it because they wanted to Luhrmann figured out what to do with the main narrative voice read it.” It is now, writes Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West, of the novel, the voice of Nick Carraway, which is not at all “probably the most widely read novel written by an American in stable in time. Luhrmann deals with both of those issues: what to the twentieth century” (4). There have been several stage do with Nick, and what to do with the extended time of the versions and even an opera. Little wonder that the story has again (the action of the novel takes place over a few months; and again attracted the attention of filmmakers and continues to but Nick’s narration takes place in a different part of the country do so. and over a far longer period of time). Lurhmann was set to go Film Versions into production in 2009, when the article reprinted below Within a year of its first publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby appeared. Then production was put on hold was a successful Broadway play (script for two years. We cannot know whether by ) and a silent film (based there is any connection between this article, on Davis’ play) directed by Herbert which was published in the premier Brenon. (5) Three sound versions Australian film journal, Senses of Cinema, followed: 1949 (directed by Elliott and Luhrmann’s film. All we can say is, he’s Nugent), 1974 () and 2000 the first director to have gotten F. Scott (Robert Markowitz; made for A&E- Fitzgerald’s novel right on screen, and that BBC TV). Australian director Baz is because he is the first writer/director in Luhrmann has reportedly acquired the any medium to have figured out how to rights to make one more film version of handle Nick’s voice. Fitzgerald’s novel and hopes to begin production in 2010. (6) Bruce Jackson: Nick’s “I”/Nick’s Eye: The silent is lost; no one has seen a print Why they couldn’t film Gatsby. Senses of for decades. All three sound versions Cinema #52, September 2009: have appeared on DVD (the 1949 version is out of print and difficult to The novel find). Each of those three sound F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is versions is, in its own way, awful. told in the form of a book written by and The 1949 film was basically a from the point of view of Nick Carraway, star vehicle for Alan Ladd. The script who at the beginning of the narration has doesn’t adapt the novel; it pillages it. been home in the Midwest since “last The novel, as Wheeler Winston Dixon autumn” and by the end has been home two points out (7), is one of penetration: years. (1) Nick had gone East, stayed things and characters are introduced and through a summer and into a fall, then went back where he chapter by chapter we learn more about them, but in this film no thought he belonged and, after a while, set about writing down question outlasts its moment and everything is explained in what he thought had happened during the five or six months in flashback as soon as it is introduced. In the novel, for example, 1922 he worked in Manhattan as a bond salesman and hung out Nick realizes Daisy was driving the car that killed Myrtle Wilson on with his cousin Daisy Buchanan, her husband only when Gatsby lets slip in a later conversation that he grabbed (and his Yale classmate) Tom, Tom’s mistress Myrtle Wilson for the wheel; in the 1949 film, we see it as it happens, so there is and her husband George, Daisy’s childhood friend Jordan Baker nothing that needs to be revealed. The plot isn’t so much simple (a professional golfer), and Nick’s mysterious neighbour, Jay as it is simple-minded. Gatsby. It is mostly a novel of character and revelation; the plot One key failure all three sound versions of The Great can be summarized in a few lines. Gatsby share is their inability to deal with the narrative voice and Gatsby had modest sales on its publication in 1925: point of view of the novel. Which is to say, each of the sound 23,870 copies, far fewer than Fitzgerald’s previous novel, This versions presents some of the same plot points as the novel, but Side of Paradise, published in 1920, which had sold 41,025 none of them tells the same story as the novel, and none of them copies. (2) The novel nearly disappeared in the 1930s, along with finds an adequate cinematic substitute for what was lost or the rest of Fitzgerald’s work: until Margaret Mitchell’s Gone discarded in transition. With the Wind in 1939, Depression-decade American readers Luhrman—THE GREAT GATSBY—4

Pages and Screens starting point for another narrative entirely (8)), they take from Films and print don’t tell stories the same way, which is why written narrative things they can use that are particular to film in filmmakers are under little or no obligation to maintain fidelity to order to approximate or otherwise accomplish what occurred on their sources. Their primary obligation is to make good movies: the page. That is always a work of major translation. “Film takes succeed at that and all else is forgiven; fail at it and nothing else from literature”, wrote Andrew Sarris, “as from nature, that matters. which is cinematically accessible. What is then projected on the Perhaps the two most important differences in print and screen is not literature (nor nature) but a restructured entity full film narration have to do with mediation and time. All printed of light on shadow.” (9) narratives deliver information to a reader via a mediator: the In his screen adaptation of John Fowles’ The French author’s narrative voice or voices, written from whatever point or Lieutenant’s Woman (10), Harold Pinter didn’t attempt to enact points of view the author finds appropriate. These are not the Fowles’ narrative voice, which was sometimes set in the 19th same as the author’s own voice or point of view. The voice of all century with the characters and sometimes in the 20th century narrative (and all utterance, for that with the reader. Instead, Pinter invented matter) is a construct specific to that parallel and interlocking narratives of 20th narrative: the voices we use in any kind of century actors playing 19th century discourse are always conditioned on the characters, with both narratives presented kind and nature of discourse going on. as equally “real”, just as Fowles’ 19th The voice I use to write this essay, for century story and 20th century narrative example, is not the voice I would use if intruder were equally “real” in the book. you and I were sitting across a table and I And director Philip Kaufman, who felt the were trying to make the same points, nor first person commentary by novelist Milan is it the voice I might use in a class or a Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of seminar or an email. This notion of the Being couldn’t possibly work as a voice- first person voice as construct was over, instead used as an emotional perhaps expressed most famously and equivalent musical selections from work economically by Arthur Rimbaud in his of the Czech composer Leo Eugen 15 May 1871 letter to Paul Demeny: “Je Janáček. (11) est un autre” (“I is an other”). But filmmakers meddle with the Some novels are told in one structure of well-known and -loved works voice all the way through (Albert Camus’ of fiction at their peril: it’s not just that L’Étranger, Charles Dickens’ Great audiences note the absence of key parts Expectations); others are told by multiple that aren’t there or are mutilated; a film voices (’s As I Lay audience will accept anything if it works – Dying, Cormac McCarthy’s No Country and, with only a few exceptions, most for Old Men). Either way, the mediating narrative voice is filmgoers haven’t read the original anyway. The difficulty arises between the reader and whatever is being read about. Everything when major structural changes in the process of adaptation turn a you know is in what that voice says and how that voice says narrative that works perfectly well in one medium into a things. narrative that works badly or not at all in another, when the All film narratives, on the other hand, present information to filmmakers fail to find the structural device that will let them viewers directly: the audience sees the actors, what they do and move the narrative from page to screen. And that is precisely the scenes in which they do it, and it hears whatever is on the what happened with each of the three sound versions of The soundtrack: voices, cars, gunshots, wind in the trees, running Great Gatsby. water, music, silence … Writers control the density of information, the amount Nick’s “I” and “Eye” of detail about any character, scene or action, but the reader The “I” and “eye” of the novel are coterminous; both belong to determines the pace at which that information is encountered, the the character whose name is Nick Carraway, who is a sometime amounts of it encountered at any one time, and the order in participant in the action, and who is always the observer and which things are read. Readers can pause whenever they like, narrator of and commentator on it. The homonym is a pun reread something already read, skip ahead or shift to a scanning incorporating both senses of that sound, and it also plays on the mode when the narrative seems to be dragging, just like viewers most famous visual metaphor in the novel: the huge deteriorating watching a film on DVD. But viewers watching a film in a sign of the “eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg” in the Valley of Ashes. theatre or when broadcast are wholly subject to the filmmaker’s The eye of the film, on the other hand, as is the case in all film choices about how much time shall be spent with each part of the and for all photographs, is the lens. Even in the few films that use narrative and the order in which those parts are encountered. If the gimmick of having the camera-eye in the space presumably they miss a line of dialog or a piece of action because their occupied by the character-eye (such as Robert Montgomery’s attention wandered or because they had to go to the toilet, they Lady in the Lake and the early scenes of Delmer Daves’ Dark will, unless they ask someone what was just said, go through the Passage, both 1947), the point of view is that of the lens. It’s just rest of the film not knowing what that line or piece of action was. that in those few films the lens and the central character happens When filmmakers are trying to make a film version of a written to be occupying the same spot. That’s a gimmicky and limiting narrative (as opposed to merely using a written narrative as Luhrman—THE GREAT GATSBY—5 way to shoot a movie, which is why the device has been so rarely Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future utilized in fiction film for anything longer than a few shots. (12) that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s If we see something from a character’s point of view in no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms literature, we see, hear and know nothing not seen, heard or farther. … And one fine morning – known by that character. We may infer things, based on what the So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back character says, but that’s us, not him or her. You don’t see Nick ceaselessly into the past. Caraway in F. Scott Fizgerald’s novel, published in 1925; he’s Clayton deals with Nick’s voice by abolishing it. the character doing the seeing we’re reading about. But Nick Caraway is a character up there on the stage or screen just like What Nick Sees, What Nick Knows any other in the 1926 stage play, the 1999 opera and the 1926, In his famous essay on time in Faulkner’s fiction, Jean-Paul 1949, 1974 and 2000 films. Sartre posited a reader telling the story of The Sound and the Nick’s narration in Fitzgerald’s novel wasn’t written as Fury in chronological order, but then, “The reader stops, for he screenplay. It was written as text. In Markowitz’s 2000 version, realizes he is telling another story. Faulkner did not first conceive those lines are read by Nick’s character off camera and they sink this orderly plot so as to shuffle it afterwards like a pack of cards; like stones in water. The problem with using a novel’s narration he could not tell it in any other way.” (13) Likewise, the voice for voice-over is, if the voice is over what the voice is describing, and point of view of Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway. then the scene is redundant; if it is over something the voice is The voice and point of view of Fitzgerald’s novel – both not describing, then it can be discordant or disjunctive. One of of them Nick’s – aren’t just the device through which the novel is several such instances in Markowitz’ version occurs in the presented; they contain essential information that tells us what apartment party scene: Nick’s voice-over tells us he had been the novel is about and how to regard the actions that transpire in drunk only two times in his life, the second being that afternoon, it. The voice telling the story in the novel knows how the story so much of what will end; the Nick we see in transpired “had a dim the film does not. Subtract and hazy cast over it”. Nick’s narrative voice and But we are seeing the point of view and you’ve events of the party in got Fitzgerald’s plot, but not perfect clarity. The only the story Fitzgerald told. haziness is in the words That voice and point of themselves. view are characters in the The Clayton novel in the same sense that version is bookended by colour and mis en scène are Nick’s narration from characters in a film. the novel. The first Everything in spoken words are Nick’s Fitzgerald’s novel is voice-over doing the mediated by and filtered novel’s first few through the sensibility of sentences; the last are a few lines from the novel’s end. As Nick Nick Carraway. We are aware of no image, save as it comes to us () walks away from the empty house, his voice- in Nick’s words; we are privy to no thoughts, save Nick’s. We over intones: know nothing of any character or action or physical condition in “I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the novel other than what we hear from Nick. On the few the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long occasions Nick describes events that transpired in his absence, he way to this , and his dream must have seemed so close that provides a plausible source for his report: Nick wasn’t present for he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was the conversation between George Wilson and his friend already behind him.” Michaelis after Myrtle was killed, for example, but a few pages Whereupon Nick walks into the darkness, the music after he reports that conversation he refers to “Michaelis’s swells, then the action shifts to a large giggling party led by testimony at the inquest”; he gets the details of the pre-war Daisy () and Tom (Bruce Dern) getting off a yacht, Louisville romance between Gatsby and Daisy from Jordan walking along a dock to a squadron of waiting period cars while Baker one afternoon in the tea-garden of the . He the music track plays “Ain’t We Got Fun” and the credits roll. sometimes mentions facts before we learn how he became aware But that isn’t the end of the novel; Clayton’s voice-over doesn’t of them, but, since the narrative space of the frame is set in that even finish Nick’s sentence. The novel’s final three paragraphs two-year period after Nick’s return to the Midwest, there is no are: more anachronism in these revelations than, say, in Marlow’s And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, puzzling use of the word “also” in his first utterance on the deck I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green of the Nellie in the Themes Estuary at the beginning of Joseph light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: “And this also has been one of the blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he dark places of the earth.” We won’t learn what that “also” could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already conjoins until we get to Kurtz’s horrific compound many pages behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the later. city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the There are things we can infer from how Nick describes night. or analyzes events that are not said overtly in the words Nick Luhrman—THE GREAT GATSBY—6 writes and which very well may not be known to Nick himself. not her charm and attraction.’ Simon’s view, though it is One reason the novel bears rereading is its apparently simple somewhat typical, completely misreads both the text and the film surface does not give up all of its secrets at once. and ignores fundamental differences between Fitzgerald’s prose “Jordan Baker”, he says in the section of Chapter 3 and Clayton’s imagery. Farrow is, in fact, the perfect Daisy. She describing their relationship, “instinctively avoided clever, epitomizes exactly what readers come to understand about Daisy shrewd men.” He never comments or reflects on how that might by the end of the novel. The nature of her character is simply apply to him. The last line of that same made too clear too soon.” (17) chapter is: “I am one of the few honest Not one of the adaptations in any people that I have ever known.” His medium deals adequately with Nick’s “honesty” is a kind that admits narrative voice; most don’t deal with it at observation, but no action: he brokers all. Nick is a character in all the an affair between his neighbour and his adaptations: the audience sees him doing cousin, deceiving his Yale classmate; things along with the other characters. The he parties with his Yale classmate, Tom action of the novel is in revelation that and Tom’s mistress, deceiving his comes through the narration itself, not the cousin Daisy; he is unbothered when he thin plot, so that inability or unwillingness learns that the woman with whom he to deal with Nick’s voice results in two might be in love is a liar and a cheat; he massive structural changes: the films, learns that his cousin killed the plays and opera all add one major mistress, not his neighbour and friend, character (in the novel we never “see” Gatsby, yet he never tells a soul – save Nick; he’s the one doing the seeing) and for us more than a year later and half a subtract or mutilate one major voice continent away. (14) Nick’s “honesty” (Nick’s, which, as noted above, speaks to is a consequence of his disengagement; us long after the events it purports to he’s “honest” because he has nothing at describe and which tells us far more than stake. its owner comprehends). Except when he’s Dennis Cutchins points out quoting himself, Nick’s voice in the novel that that Daisy doesn’t utter one is a written, not a spoken voice; it is the intelligent sentence, and that many of voice of a fictive author, not a fictive her lines are banal and some are stupid, inane or pointless. (15) speaker. Fitzgerald was very much aware of the difference in the She shows no awareness of anything that doesn’t affect her two. directly and immediately. In both the 1994 and the 2000 film versions, most of Daisy’s lines are right from the novel; in both, Two Anthropologists, One Plains Indian she comes off as a mindless, self-indulgent twit. We can Many years ago I heard about an anthropologist working with a understand why Gatsby doesn’t notice: Gatsby is obsessively in group of American Plains Indians who was told a wonderful love with Daisy; he adores everything about her, except the fact story by a particularly good narrator. He’d never heard that story that she married Tom Buchanan. But what about Nick, who is, or anything quite like it previously, so he was at first delighted after all, our source for those lines? Except for a few moments of with his find, then puzzled because there was something vaguely mild annoyance, he never says anything negative about Daisy, is familiar about it and it wasn’t quite of a piece with the other never put off by her – until he realizes that it was Daisy who stories he’d been hearing. He asked the storyteller to tell him killed Myrtle and that Daisy is going to let Gatsby take the rap about the source of the story and was told that a few years earlier for it, and his reaction there has to do with her ethics rather than another anthropologist had visited the same tribe. They had all her style or intelligence. “Are you in love with me?”, she asks been telling stories and someone told that anthropologist that he him when she arrives at his cottage for tea without her husband. should tell a story himself and this, the Indian said, was the story Thomas E. Boyle argues that he is: “How else can we account for the first anthropologist had told. Nick’s failure to recognize her vanity and stupidity?” (16) If That was when the second anthropologist realized he Nick is in love with her, it doesn’t go deeply enough for him to hadn’t been hearing a previously undiscovered Plains Indian do anything about it, and it doesn’t interfere with him playing narrative at all, but a famous European folktale (I forget which, Pandarus for Gatsby. perhaps it was Beowulf) that had undergone a singular structural Daisy is shallow and narcissistic. Her child is an transformation. The basic structure of European folk narrative is occasional toy. She takes no responsibility for anything. She grounded in a notion of threes: three wishes, three giants, three seems blissfully unaware of the world: when she chides Gatsby attempts to scale the wall … But the basic structure of narrative for missing her wedding he tells her he was in Europe fighting a among that group of Indians was four: four tasks, four attempts, war. In the novel, the fact of her character comes on us only four directions. At some point between the recitation by the first slowly, because Nick himself hardly appreciates it. “Several anthropologist and the retelling to the second, every set of three critics,” writes Wheeler Winston Dixon, have suggested that in the narrative had become a set of four, and in the process the Farrow’s acting is the film’s weakest link. John Simon noted at story had become unrecognizable because it had become a the time of the film’s release, ‘Mia Farrow, whose voice is all different story altogether. crooning and squawking, embodies Daisy’s superficiality, but Luhrman—THE GREAT GATSBY—7

And likewise with the film versions of F. Scott If Baz Luhrmann or whoever is the next filmmaker to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As long as Nick – whose take Gatsby on thinks the plot is what the novel is really about – continuing revelation of information to us is at the heart of the a mysterious rich guy with a lingering love for a flighty society novel – is in the films a primarily inessential character, just lady who tries to get her away from her playboy husband but someone hanging around, the films are not Gatsby on screen but only gets the husband’s mistress and himself killed – he should a different story entirely. It may look as if those scenes have the acknowledge that’s what he’s up to, get rid of Nick and do with same number of characters as the counterpart scenes in the novel, Gatsby what no filmmaker has yet done: make a movie that but they don’t. They have one more character and they haven’t a works. And if he understands the centrality of Nick’s narration to clue what should be done Fitzgerald’s novel and with him. wants to make a film of that, he should deal with Can It Be Done? that voice and character as Given the centrality of something more than mere Nick’s first-person voice decoration. and point of view, is it possible to translate F. ENDNOTES Scott Fitzgerald’s The It is possible to read the Great Gatsby to the internal dating as an error screen? It is indeed by Fitzgerald or as possible to transfer the Fitzgerald economically plot, or something like it, letting us know that Nick but the plot is neither was taking longer to write what the novel is nor his story than it had taken what the novel is about. him to experience it. Voice and point of view Fitzgerald scholar Matthew are at the heart of Fitzgerald’s story. As Sartre said of The Sound J. Bruccoli comments on the two dates: “In Chapter I Nick states and the Fury: the story cannot be told in any other way. Lose the that he ‘came back from the East last autumn’ – that is, after voice and change the point of view, and you’re telling a different Gatsby’s murder which occurred around Labor Day 1922. At the story. Whether you tell it well or badly, it’s a different story. end of the novel Nick remarks that he remembers the events of Until and unless a filmmaker finds a way to accomplish on the day of the murder ‘after two years.’ This inconsistency is screen what Fitzgerald accomplished on the page with Nick’s probably Fitzgerald’s lapse; but it is possible that he added a year voice and point of view, the result will never be a fair adaptation to the time scheme to account for the time Nick was writing the of the story F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote and neither will it be a good book.” In “Getting It Right: The Publishing Process and the movie. Correction of Factual Errors—with Reference to The Great Perhaps it is not possible to make a good movie of Gatsby”, http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/essays/right.html, accessed Gatsby if Nick Carraway is one of the primary characters. His 13 March 2009. primacy in the novel doesn’t result from his conduct in those Matthew J. Bruccoli, “Introduction”, in Matthew J. Bruccoli rooms in which most of the action takes place but rather in the (Ed.), New Essays on The Great Gatsby (: way his narrative style permits us to gradually understand things Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 2. about the other characters he doesn’t figure out until late or at all. If he’s standing there beaming at Daisy while she jabbers like an For the other notes to the article, go to the version in Senses idiot (as Sam Waterston does in the 1974 version), it is difficult of Cinema: http://sensesofcinema.com/2009/52/nicks-i- not to think he is something of an idiot as well. If he stands there nicks-eye-why-they-couldnt-film-gatsby/ looking bored or superior to everyone else (as does in the 2000 version), we wonder why he doesn’t hang out with These are the major translations of the novel: people he finds less distasteful. If we get his voice-over, telling 1926: Owen Davis’ play, directed by , which us what we’re seeing on the screen (Rudd again), we wonder opened 2 February 1926 at the Ambassador Theater in New York why the director thinks we need to be told what we’re looking at, and ran for 112 performances. It was a play in a prologue and or, as is more often the case in that film, the voice-over and the three acts set in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1917 and Long Island in screen action contradict one another, we wonder why the director 1925.[1]1926: film based on Davis’ play, script by Becky doesn’t decide which story he’s telling and stick with it. Gardiner; adaptation by Elizabeth Meehand; directed by Herbert Gatsby is, for all the fancy cars and drunk party guests, Brenon. as Gatsby, Lois Wilson as Daisy, Neil a small narrative. All the significant action except Myrtle’s death Hamilton as Nick, Georgia Hale as Myrtle, as takes place in rooms: Nick’s cottage, Jay’s bedroom, Wilson’s George Wilson, Hale Hamilton as Tom, and Carmelita Geraghty garage, the Buchanans’ sunroom, Tom’s upper Manhattan pied- as Jordan. Produced by Jesse L. Lasky and Adolph Zukor. à-terre. The action in those scenes occurs mostly in dialogue among very few people, which is why the novel worked so well 1949 film: screenplay by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum; as a play. Nick is rarely doing or saying anything in those scenes. directed by Elliott Nugent. Paramount. Alan Ladd as Gatsby, With only a few exceptions, his job is to bear witness, to tell us Betty Field as Daisy, MacDonald Carey as Nick, Barry Sullivan about it a year or so later from the heart of the country. Luhrman—THE GREAT GATSBY—8 as Tom, as Wilson, and Shelley Winters as Myrtle. 2006 play: by Simon Levy, July 2006, , . 1955 television drama: Robert Montgomery Presents, NBC, 9 May 1955. Written by Albert Sapinsley. According to Wikipedia, “The Great Gatsby, in a new adaptation by Simon Levy, was performed for the opening of the new 1958 television drama: , CBS, 6 June 1958. Written Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 2006. This by David Shaw. was billed as ‘the first authorized stage version of the novel since 1926’. However, two months earlier, in Brussels, Belgium, The 1974 film: screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola; directed by Jack Kunsten Festival des Arts debuted Gatz, a six-hour production by Clayton. Paramount. as Gatsby, Mia Farrow as the New York theater company . Set in a Daisy, Sam Waterston as Nick, Bruce Dern as Tom. ramshackle contemporary office building, Gatz utilized the entire text of Gatsby, at first read by employees at the office building, and eventually acted out by them. Gatz premiered in the U.S. on 1999 opera: libretto and score by ; song lyrics by September 21, 2006, at the Walker Art Center (also in Murray Horwitz. Premiered 20 December 1999, Metropolitan Minneapolis) just eleven days after the closing of The Great Opera, New York. Gatsby at The Guthrie. Also, it has received an adaptation by the Japanese musical theater company in 1991, 2000 television film: teleplay by John McLaughlin; directed by performed by Snow Troupe. It will be performed by Moon Robert Markowitz. A&E-BBC. Mia Sorvino as Daisy, Toby Troupe of the company in 2008.” Stephens as Gatsby, Paul Rudd as Nick, Martin Donovan as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby, accessed 21 Tom, Francie Swift as Jordan Baker, and Heather Goldenhersh as February 2009.. Myrtle Buchanan.

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COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2014 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXVIII: January 28 Josef von Sternberg, Underworld, 1927, 81 minutes February 4 Jean Cocteau, Orpheus, 1950, 95min February 11 Kenji Mizoguchi, The Life of Oharu, 1952, 136 min February 18 Satyajit Ray, Charulata/The Lonely Wife, 1964, 119 minutes February 25 Metin Erksan, Dry Summer, 1964, 90 min March 4 Monte Hellman, Two-Lane Blacktop, 1971, 103 min March 11 John Cassavetes, Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976, 135 min Spring break March 17-22 March 25 Agnes Varda, Vagabond, 1985, 105 min April 1 Gabriell Axel, Babette’s Feast, 1987, 104min April 8 Louis Malle, Vanya on 42nd Street, 1994, 119 min April 15 Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, 110 min April 22 Tommy Lee Jones, The Three Burials of Melquaides Estrada, 2005, 120 min April 29 José Padilha, Elite Squad, 2007, 115 min May 6 John Huston, The Dead, 1987 83 min

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