the great gatsby: redford vs. dicaprio smackdown

Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby is brash and loud and colorful, compared to the pastel-hued tones of Jack Clayton's 1974 version. But is it a better film? Yes and no. The real take-away as the credits began to roll was that F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless tale had proved, once again, to be, while not exactly un-filmable, at least as elusive to capture as Gatsby's dream of a future life with Daisy proved to be.

Leonardo DiCaprio was effective and impressive as Jay Gatsby, the self-made (and re-made) man, a dreamer who wants to go back in time with the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. DiCaprio was able to convey how much he cared for Daisy, and how deeply his small-town origins still hung about him, no matter how hard he tried to escape them. In 1974 Robert Redford captured the Gatsby facade, and wore the clothes (designer Theoni V. Aldredge won the Best Costume Oscar, but Ralph Lauren did the men's suits) with more ease and authority. Redford even made the phrase "old sport" sound almost natural and seemed more convincingly menacing as a man who may have been hiding some dark secrets. But DiCaprio was able to take the character to a more emotional place.

He wore it well: Robert Redford in one of Ralph Lauren's linen suits

Gatsby, looking good poolside

What really rankled in the 2013 version was how the women in the story all seemed to be relegated to the background. Daisy may have been Gatsby's focus and the impetus for all of his character's actions, but as played by Carey Mulligan she was just a bland, soft-voiced, Southern-drawling cipher. Luhrmann didn't even acknowledge Daisy's lack of mothering skills — until the last few moments of the film the audience, unless they were acquainted with the book or earlier film version, would hardly know she even has a child. As miscast as Mia Farrow might have been in the 1974 version, she at least was front and center throughout the story. Her Daisy was flighty and selfish and rather unlikable. Probably a litte too unlikable. But Daisy Buchanan, as Fitzgerald wrote her, is not, ultimately, a great person. Luhrmann tried to soft-pedal some of his heroine's faults at the end, which should annoy fans of the novel. Daisy also was dressed in impractical, busy summer frocks, designed by Catherine Martin (who is married to Luhrmann), and an unattractive bleach blond bob.

We have come to expect the character of Daisy to be un-castable, but there is no excuse for how poorly Jordan Baker and Myrtle Wilson were represented in this latest film version. Elizabeth Debicki started off promisingly as Jordan Baker, Daisy's professional golfer best friend, but then practically disappeared from the action, as Luhrmann chose to focus on narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) and Gatsby and Daisy. What happened to Nick and Jordan's romance, or Jordan's witty, wicked sense of humor? What happened to Fitzgerald's interesting, multifacted female characters? Gone.

And unless the viewer is paying strict attention, it is possible that Tom Buchanan's (Joel Edgerton) lover, Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher) might be completely missed. With Luhrmann's frenetic pacing of certain scenes it's altogether likely that not only would one not catch Myrtle's name, but also not realize at first that she was the person who tried to flag down Gatsby's yellow car as it whizzed by in a penultimate scene of the movie.

Daisy's husband Tom is a jerk and a racist and a bigot, but he actually does care for Myrtle. Their relationship in both the book and the 1974 filmed version is portrayed as something far beyond casual. Joel Edgerton tried hard to fill in the blanks left in Luhrmann's script. Bruce Dern may have been a strange casting choice as the rich, Old Money, hunky, athletic Tom in 1974, but he very ably portrayed the boor's love of both of his women, Daisy and Myrtle.

That's a lot of lace and flounces for a summer frock

Leo, as Gatsby, raises his glass in a welcoming toast

Quick takes, 1974:

The screenplay/adaptation was by Francis Ford Coppola (!)

The scene where Nick has dinner with Daisy and Tom and Jordan: we see Daisy get jealous of Tom taking Myrtle's phone call — she is definitely hurt, and we feel that she really loves him.

The close-up camerawork was a little disconcerting.

Extra scenes showing Gatsby and Daisy's affair once they become reacquainted make us believe that their love may have a chance.

The scene with Gatsby showing his shirts to impress Daisy really works, as does the scene featuring Gatsby's final swim in his pool.

Quick takes, 2013:

A real stand-out scene is the final confrontation at the Plaza Hotel, where DiCaprio lets Gatsby (finally) lose his cool.

The tea that Gatsby arranges at Nick's to (re)meet Daisy, with Gatsby over-filling his small cottage with flowers and cakes, his nervous anticipation and awe at seeing the love of his life after five years, is both funny and poignant to watch.

The first over-the-top party that Nick attends at Gatsby's is everything Luhrmann is known for — visual opulence, hip music, frenetic camerawork — and it's great fun to watch. Unfortunately the rest of the film can't quite keep up the pace.

Tobey Maguire's Nick Carraway was even more removed and diffident than Fitzgerald's. Not many could attend a drug and alcohol-fueled orgy and still remain uninvolved, but somehow he pulled it off. Luhrmann's framing device of having an alcoholic Carraway narrate the film from a sanitarium as he writes the story didn't quite work, either.

The hip-hop music used to "update" this Gatsby actually worked quite well, but like many of the other design elements, seemed to lessen or disappear as the film progressed. Why not truly update the story to modern times instead of keeping it in the '20s? That may have held this film back from being a truly modern version.

Mia Farrow and Robert Redford as Daisy and Gatsby

L-R: Nick, Gatsby, Daisy and Tom (Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton)

As much as this latest version of The Great Gatsby didn't quite live up to my expectations — its vaunted excess actually seemed to peter out about halfway through the film into straight melodrama — it's hard not to admire both Luhrmann's ambition and aspiration to film such a complex literary classic. When most multiplex movie fare involves superheroes who battle endless CGI explosions, or the latest entry in a franchise that features cars driving really, really fast, a film that ends with some of the most evocative words in American literature is something to applaud:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

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the great gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is considered one of the great American novels. It is certainly great, and quintessentially American. It can practically be read in one sitting, but that doesn't limit the effectiveness of Fitzgerald's economic prose. The story, set during a hot Long Island summer in 1922, is part love story, part morality tale, while also reflecting the post-World War I excesses of the priveleged set.

Jay Gatsby may be the focus of the novel, but the hero is its narrator, Nick Carraway, a 29 year-old man who has been drifting through life since the end of the war. Originally from the Midwest, he, like many, heads east to New York in search of direction — and something else — thrills, love, purpose? He isn't quite sure. He gets pulled into the orbit of his wealthy cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her philandering, polo-playing husband Tom. They try to pair him off with Daisy's professional golfer friend, the "incurably dishonest," Jordan Baker, who leads him to his most significant friendship of the summer — his mysterious and exceedingly wealthy next-door neighbor, Jay Gatsby, who throws extravagant parties that he never seems to attend.

As Nick gets to know Gatsby he learns that he and Daisy were once very well-acquainted. In fact, Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby when he went off to the War in 1917, but then turned around and married the more suitable (and monied) Tom Buchanan (who attended Yale with Nick) two years later. When the war was over a heartbroken Gatsby devoted his life to amassing a suitable fortune to both impress Daisy and launch him into the society he has always so desperately wanted to be a part of. But the New Egg and Old Egg where Gatsby and the Buchanans reside are strictly divided — new money and old money. Old money may attend new money's lavish parties, but will never really accept them as one of their own, as Tom Buchanan effectively sneers when Gatsby claims that he and Daisy are going to run off together, "I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that's the idea you can count me out ..."

Fitzgerald's Gatsby is not just a romantic dreamer, but a personal embodiment of the American Dream. He is a self-made man, although the source of his income is shown to be through underworld connections. Gatsby has reinvented himself, from his low origins as James Gatz, a poor farmer's son. His go-getter attitude garnered him connections to powerful men who wanted to help him — first a millionaire named Dan Cody, and later New Yorker Meyer Wolfshiem.

"Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: "He's the man who fixed the World's Series back in 1919."

"Fixed the World's Series?" I repeated. […] "Why isn't he in jail?"

"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man."

As Nick gets to know more and more about Gatsby, his admiration for him is not tarnished, as it is with his party guests and even Tom and Daisy. If anything, he respects him more, as he tells him towards the end of the novel, "They're a rotten crowd ... You're worth the whole damn bunch put together"

Fitzgerald writes beautifully, and his dialogue is so alive that it seems not just modern, but contemporary. There are jarring notes, however, mostly in the form of racist comments made by Tom Buchanan. Ethnic stereotypes also abound, further alienating the reader from the "beautiful" Daisy and her crowd. Some of the recurrent imagery, although evocative, is a bit overdone. Although many like to point out the number of times Gatsby calls someone "old sport," I was bothered more by Fitzgerald's need to refer again and again to "the valley of ashes," and the omnipresent poster on the road to New York featuring the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg.

Eckleburg aside, there are some wonderful visual references, most notably the green light that flashes at the end of Daisy's dock across the Sound from Gatsby. Gatsby sees it as a guiding light, bringing him back to his true love, and not for what it truly is, a siren's call. The scene with Gatsby's shirts, where he impresses Nick and Daisy with his extensive and expensive wardrobe, is a neat visual to tie in to the other overarching theme of the novel — money, and how it determines most of the characters' actions and motivations.

“'Her voice is full of money,' he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood it before. It was full of money — that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it ... High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl.”

Gatsby knows that money is what drives Daisy, but he also hopes that there is great love, too. Daisy may love Gatsby, in a way, as one loves their youth, but she also loves Tom, and not just for his wealth. It is clear how she reacts to his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, calling him at their home, that he can hurt her, which wouldn't be the case if she didn't care about him. Tom knows this, but Gatsby doesn't want to believe that Daisy can love both of them.

"I love you now — isn't that enough? I can't help what's past ... I did love him once — but I loved you too!"

The Great Gatsby is a classic and timeless tale which features (mostly) unlikable people. Gatsby is the most sympathetic, because as hopeless as it might be, he has a dream of the future. Nick can only observe and then retreat when life gets too real, too messy. And Daisy and Tom are just like all of those selfish people we read about every day, who think that the world only exists for their own entertainment. As Fitzgerald, through Nick, so eloquently states,

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

vintage '80s

The 1980s, as a style decade, was certainly guilty of some serious fashion faux pas. Some of those trends are even coming back, or they never really left. Day-glo socks and other accessories can be seen all over Target these days. Bi-level and asymmetrical haircuts are strangely still being sported by women all over the country. But one of the trends of the '80s that was dear to my heart, and isn't around that much anymore, was vintage clothing. I don't miss those other trends, but I do miss vintage or "antique" clothing.

I dove headfirst into this trend, and was pretty lucky, because my mom, who had lived in New York in her 20s, had held onto most of her clothes, and I was able to raid her old wardrobe for some great pieces. I wore my mother's old party dresses and fancy attire, mixed in with basic items like jeans or simple skirts. I also shopped in used clothing stores, and even worked in a few of the more famous New York City ones (Canal Jean Co. and Reminiscence), for quite a few years during and post college.

Outside Scribner's bookstore in some typical '80s city garb — antique coat and scarf, cropped jeans, short boots.

In SoHo, near the basketball courts, wearing my "James Dean Rebel Without A Cause" reversible jacket that used to be my mom's, a vintage scarf that originally belonged to my grandfather, and some antique clip-on earrings.

I remember the gigantic bins full of of old, used, woolen overcoats outside of Canal Jean Company on Broadway, where male and female, young and old, would try them on, looking for the perfect, dramatic winter coat. Most would tend to be oversized, which was of course, fine in the '80s, so one would roll up the sleeves and flip up the collars to come up with one's own version of a '40s-style trenchcoat.

I was always a little leery of those overcoats, some still with an odor of mothballs. I wondered where the store's antiques buyer had found them. Were they really so many old men in Cincinnati no longer in need of their winter overcoats, or were they just from some overstuffed warehouse, where they never sold? And here they were, on the backs of New Yorkers (and New Jerseyans and Long Islanders, etc.) 40 years later. But tons of people bought them, and wore them during the cold winter, and looked pretty cool while doing it. Even as an avid film buff, I couldn't really remember any old black and white movie featuring overcoats exactly like these, but I think a lot of people were buying these sorts of clothes and remaking themselves in what they saw as more modern versions of cinematic superstars of the past, like Humphrey Bogart or Lauren Bacall. I know I was at times.

In one of my mom's old party dresses, channeling Kim Novak.

I worked at another clothing store, Reminiscence, after I left Canal Jeans. That became a bit of a schizophrenic "vintage" experience. Reminiscence did sell vintage items, but its real money was made on its own versions and knock-offs of mostly '50 styles. Bright colors and prints were its trademark, appearing on everything from trumpet skirts to Hawaiian shirts, and of course, even jeans. It was probably appropriate, with all of the talk at the time, of simulation and questions of originality in the art world, that art student me worked at a retail store which was simulating styles of the past.

Fashion these days, in comparison, is pretty boring. People seemed to pay a little more attention to putting together a look in the '80s. Maybe their outfits were over-the-top, but they were interesting, too. What current fashion trend is interesting? Certainly not leggings, or the persistent wearing of one's trousers 4 to 5 inches below one's underwear. Where are all the fun clothes?

This fun little number probably cost me round $5.00, and the vintage shoes and oversized blue plastic hoop clip-on earrings, not much more. It was a wow at the Warhol opening at MoMA. And more than that, as you can see, it was a lot of fun to wear.

Some of the blame for current boring fashion trends I blame on the obsession first with supermodels, and then designer labels. The inevitable red carpet "Who are you wearing?" question as mostly cookie cutter gowns glide by generates little enthusiasm, and seldom seems to translate to any street wear. As the '80s waned, television shows centering on fashion, style, make-overs, and supermodels, became omnipresent. In the '90s suddenly heels had to be high and thin (no more boots or chunky heels). Skirts and silhouettes also slimmed down (goodbye '50s-style puff skirts). Everything, while certainly stylish, was also uniform. There was no room for mis-matched earrings, or just wearing one earring, bright colors, and prints. Black, always a go-to color in fashion, was certainly as popular in the '80s as any decade, but in the '90s and now in the '00s, black and solid muted colors dominate. Now don't get me wrong, I don't miss all those '80s little floral prints that were also all over the place, but a splash of color, something that even looks a little crazy, something a little fun — where today is the fun in fashion?

I've been wondering if this latest film version of The Great Gatsby will spawn another "vintage glamour is back" moment. These trends never really seem to take hold for long, however. Fashion trends only last from one season to the next. Lots of folks like myself still enjoy shopping at thrift and used clothing stores. It might never be like it was in the '80s, when vintage clothing and style became a bigger trend. I find that a little sad. But I guess you can now be prepared for the sight of me walking down the street in a vintage trumpet skirt or something similar. I warned you.