Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle, becoming a witness to obsession and tragedy.
The 1974 adaptation of Fitzgerald's classic is a lavish but somewhat stiff production. The screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola captures the novel's melancholy and obsession reasonably well, though it often feels stagey and over-literal. Robert Redford is a handsome but emotionally remote Gatsby, while Mia Farrow's Daisy is appropriately ethereal if slightly grating — the ensemble is competent but rarely transcendent. Gordon Willis's cinematography has moments of golden-era beauty but lacks the visual invention that might distinguish it. As a literary adaptation, it offers little that is cinematically novel — it is a respectful but somewhat fusty rendering of a well-known story. The ending follows the novel's tragic arc faithfully, achieving a somber resonance without fully capitalizing on the emotional devastation it might have reached.