The Great Gatsby (1974)

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Movie
German title The Great Gatsby
Original title The Great Gatsby
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1974
length 138 minutes
Age rating FSK 16 / shortened 12
Rod
Director Jack Clayton
script Francis Ford Coppola
production David Merrick
music Nelson Riddle
camera Douglas Slocombe
cut Tom Priestley
occupation

The Great Gatsby (Original title: The Great Gatsby ) is an American drama from 1974 . Directed by Jack Clayton , the screenplay was written by Francis Ford Coppola based on the multi-film novel The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald from 1925. Robert Redford played the leading role .

action

Nick Carraway, a young stockbroker, moves from Minnesota to Long Island in 1922 . He lives in a small house in the immediate vicinity of a grand villa where Jay Gatsby lives, a mysterious, still young millionaire who regularly throws lavish parties in his property with a large garden.

On the other side of the sound lives Carraway's cousin Daisy, who has an unhappy marriage to the wealthy Tom Buchanan. Nick visits her regularly and meets the attractive Jordan Baker. The reluctant young man doesn't think he has any chances with her because he has little money.

Nick is invited to a party by a servant of Gatsby (Gatsby hardly appears at these parties) and meets him there after another servant has led him to Gatsby. Although this first encounter is very strange, Nick befriends him. Carraway learns that the (presumably) coming from a humble Gatsby still Carraways cousin Daisy Buchanan loves, used together with it before an officer in the US Army in the First World War took part in France. After that, Gatsby probably got wealthy smuggling alcohol (as Tom Buchanan thinks). Gatsby had hosted the parties in the hope of seeing Daisy again, but so far in vain.

Nick arranges a meeting for Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, who become lovers. Daisy also learns that Gatsby has been collecting newspaper clippings about her for years. However, Daisy Buchanan refuses to leave her husband. Tom Buchanan, who has a mistress himself - Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a simple gas station owner - already suspects that Gatsby and his wife could be in a relationship.

On a hot afternoon, the five acquaintances, Nick, Jordan, Buchanan, Daisy and Gatsby drive to New York in two cars. A confrontation breaks out in a hotel room in Manhattan : Gatsby and Buchanan urge Daisy to choose between them, whereupon she loses her nerve and flees the hotel. Gatsby runs after her, he and Daisy Buchanan drive back to Long Island together in Gatsby's yellow car. Nick, Jordan and Buchanan follow behind and pass Wilson's gas station; An accident occurred there: Myrtle Wilson ran into a car and died after a violent argument with her husband (who knows that she is cheating on him and wants to move west). It turns out that it was Gatsby's car. Daisy was behind the wheel and drove on in a panic. Gatsby wants to take the blame out of love for Daisy. George Wilson goes to the Buchanan house armed. There Tom Buchanan can convince Wilson that Gatsby was the driver of the car. Daisy, who is back with her husband, is silent on the facts.

Wilson goes to Gatsby, shoots him in his swimming pool, and then commits suicide. Nobody turns up at Gatsby's funeral except Nick and Gatsby's father. Some time later, Nick meets Daisy again, from whose indifference he is deeply disappointed and disaffected.

Nick tells Jordan Baker that he is going back to the West because he is too tender for the East.

backgrounds

In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald created a tragic romantic drama with his novel. Five decades later, authors like Truman Capote tried in vain to adapt the story to a script. Only Francis Ford Coppola ( The Godfather ) succeeded in shortening the material true to the original and yet Hollywood-fair to a good two hours of film length. The cast turned out to be hardly less complicated: names like Warren Beatty , Faye Dunaway , Jack Nicholson and Candice Bergen were traded before Robert Redford and Mia Farrow were accepted. Farrow was pregnant while filming.

For the character of the seedy Meyer Wolfsheim , the gangster Arnold Rothstein , who is said to have postponed the World Series in baseball in 1919 , was the godfather.

Production costs were estimated at 6.5 million US dollars . The then six-year-old Patsy Kensit , who became known more than ten years later as a musician with the band Eighth Wonder (including I'm not scared, written by the Pet Shop Boys ), made her film debut here.

Reviews

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times that he understood the novel to mean that, despite his criminal past, Gatsby was a " romantic, naive and heroic " man from the Midwest. This message doesn't get across in the film. The viewer does not understand what should be special about the " narcissistic " Daisy Buchanan portrayed by Mia Farrow . The script " plundered " the novel .

The lexicon of international film wrote that the film was artistically a " failure ". His direction is " cumbersome, conventional and without rhythmic form ". The costumes and the backdrops exuded a " nostalgic shine " which, however, does not do justice to the novel.

The writer Tennessee Williams comes to a positive assessment :

"Jack Clayton (has) made The Great Gatsby a film [...] which, in my opinion, even surpasses the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald."

- Tennessee Williams

Awards

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Film review by Roger Ebert
  2. ↑ The great Gatsby. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ^ Tennessee Williams, Memoiren , 1975, German 1977, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, p. 226

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