The Great Gatsby (1926) (trailer)
dir. Herbert Brenon
dir. Baz Luhrmann
Check out the two bookending versions of this tale - the pre-Crash, pre-Depression Jazz-era version, and the post-Bubble post-Recession Now-era version. I love the different takes on the parties, both decadent as hell but in totally different scales. Neither the 1949 Alan Ladd version nor the '74 Redford version have the passion of these two trailers.
None of those versions you mention are abhorrent monstrosities directed by a guy who makes amateur mistakes consistently through his movies, like Luhrman's version.
ReplyDeleteLuhrman's will probably be the only surviving version to have a pulse - the only one free of what Christopher Morley called the "gorgeous hypocrisy" of literary canonization. Those staid, embalmed "respectful" versions like the made-for-English-class Redford version are the real monstrosities. Their lack of imagination and passion is an enemy of literature, an enemy of cinema, and an enemy of the very witty very fun Fitzgerald.
ReplyDeleteGatsby is a tale of small heartbreak set in the middle of the biggest, craziest, drunkest party in American history. It needs to be huge and fun and lurid, and from the trailer it seems likely that finally someone will deliver on that.