THE SCREEN
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
Finally, there must be a vast program of education of the European electorate, to make it realize there is no soft ride to prosperity on the backs of immigrant workers. That for those who are...
...It's hard to say which is the most miscast...
...That for those who are here with their children, going back is unrealistic and they must be decently integrated...
...Redford has teeth that look as if they would like to eat Miss Farrow's hats, it must be admitted that, though not suited to the roles they play, the two stars are at least suited to each other...
...The coffee table collapses in inelegant splinters...
...Redford is too substantial to play Gatsby, Miss Farrow is not substantial enough to play Daisy...
...To make his misapprehending guests feel at ease the host has unerringly misappointed his home right down to the last detail, which is one of those massive fifty-dollar books ($19.95 special pre-pub, price good only until December 24) placed slightly off-center on the coffee table...
...The adaptation and the direction having failed, all we are left with are the stars, Robert Redford and Mia Farrow...
...But since everyone in the family, heaving together, couldn't lift the book, the intended impression is, like all the other pretenses at this party, a bit ridiculous...
...Redford had played Daisy and Miss Farrow Gatsby...
...Nevertheless, someone is eventually attracted by the book's imposing appearance and obvious authority...
...Her stomach, meanwhile, was fleshing itself out too, in ways not so desirable for this role...
...The pressure of her hand on the cover is ever so light and respectful...
...My goodness he's grown fat...
...As a result Miss Farrow has attempted to cope with her problem, it appears, by getting silicone injections in her cheekbones, adapting the technology of underprivileged strippers in order to flesh herself out for the role--to appear less a shrinking violet than usual...
...In the end Tom Ewell makes a "special appearance" to deliver the famous eulogy at Gatsby's funeral, "The poor son-of-a-bitch...
...Since Mr...
...In short, Mr...
...He just looks like a born hacker (around) who is fated to succeed through goofing off rather than, like Gatsby, to fail through taking everything far too seriously...
...Certain clauses in their contracts made this impossible, though, so both had to struggle along in roles for which they weren't suited...
...But we should, as father would have said, have thought of that before...
...Redford doesn't add much to the film either...
...Costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge, whose name sounds as if it came off the guest list from one of Gatsby's parties, has attempted to help Miss Farrow take up more psychological space in the film by putting her in hats with brims that require lots of clearance on all sides...
...These hat brims also have the appeal of looking edible, like some extraordinary dough flayed to translucent thinness and starched into rigidity...
...Redford and Miss Farrow play kissy-kissy, touchytouchy while Sam Waterston attempts to play Nick Carraway by putting caraway seeds in the bird feeder outside his house...
...For the better part of two-and-a-half hours, then, Mr...
...The break-up of the shot-gun marriage between the poverty of the developing countries and rich European economic needs will not be an easy business...
...It is a coffee-table tome of a movie if ever there was one, a literary classic transmogrified into an illustrated extravaganza, the sort of book/movie that confounds beauty with prettiness...
...Some movie...
...It is Nick's telling of the story that makes Gatsby himself as insubstantial and mysterious as his own "deathless dream" of Daisy...
...The book has been placed that way to give the impression that someone in the family might have been reading it and casually put it down...
...She wanders over to it with nonchalant discomfort in a gown that's a little too snug, and with a completely tentative and indifferent gesture she lifts the cover to peep inside...
...But the movie tries to recapture this ephemeral quality in the novel only ineptly with pastel colors and hazy, soft-focus photography...
...And that we must revise our whole miserly attitude towards support for development both in the underdeveloped parts of Europe and the Thir/t World itself...
...If books were movies and movies books, the new film version of The Great Gatsby could be one of these fancy editions that are seen only at the wrong parties...
...26 April 1974:188...
...OOO THE GREAT GAPSQUEAK OO0 OOOOOO0 THE SCREEN There is a certain kind of dinner party where everyone reeks of elegance, or would, except that no one has enough of a feel for these things to realize that elegance doesn't reek...
...The one book that this film could not be, however, is the novel F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote back in 1925, despite the film's slavish adherence to Fitzgerald's plot and dialogue...
...The rest of Mr...
...I haven't seen Tom Ewell since The Seven Year Itch...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...And it won't be a quickie divorce, Nevada-style...
...Director Jack Clayton and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola have assumed that if the movie just falls down and worships the novel, the novel will yield up its secret power to the movie...
...In fact the movie would have been altogether better east if Mr...
...yet it proves to be the ounce beyond endurance...
...It won't, and doesn't, because that power resides in Nick Carraway's narration rather than in the plot or dialogue...
...While Mr...
...Redford-and his teeth too, for that matter--looks suited to only one activity in life as well as on the screen: hacking around...
Vol. 100 • April 1974 • No. 8
