The Great Gatsby -- 1974

          I just watched this tonight after having finished reading the book about a week ago. For those of you who don't know, it is a tale of the mysterious Jay Gatsby, the wealthy neighbor to Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story. Gatsby throws over-the-top alcoholic parties on his magnificent property in the 1920s, when the story was written and takes place, but he really longs for his ex-lover, Daisy, who happens to be Nick's cousin. The only slight problem is that Daisy is now married with a daughter. Francis Ford Coppola adapted F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel for the screen, and I think it was a waste of his time. Literally about every word was taken directly from the book with the exception of a couple of overly dramatic scenes. Even some of the narration is carried over to the movie. However, the few lines that probably needed to be carried over (such as more in the end speech) were left behind. Other movies have borrowed countless lines from their origins (such as The Silence of the Lambs), so this failure of a movie is not entirely due to that. I don't think Mia Farrow was pretty enough to play Daisy. A major theme of the book is that memory makes mistakes, meaning that Gatsby remembered Daisy to be even more beautiful than she was, but she was still supposed to be fairly astonishing. I don't think Farrow's yellowing teeth got the job done. Despite my complaints, I did like a few sequences in it, but writing them here would ruin the ending. Overall, I think this story was not meant for the screen, and I sure hope that this year's new adaptation proves me wrong; although I doubt it because the director's Romeo + Juliet was ineffably painful to watch.