The Great Gatsby
                                                                                          
Director: Elliot Nugent
Year: 1949
Rating: 5.5
Before Leonardo DiCaprio, before Robert Redford, Alan Ladd was the Great Gatsby. There was a silent version as well but that is lost. But Paramount still had the rights to the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel that they had paid $25,000 for two decades earlier. And their star Ladd wanted to be Gatsby. The novel written in 1925 that detailed the excess and immorality of the jazz age during prohibition was actually a flop upon its publication, but was gaining a second life on its way to being considered a classic today. Paramount was reluctant to go forward until Ladd threatened to go on strike if the film wasn't made.



After John Farrow dropped out from being the director because he wanted Gene Tierney as Daisy but the producer demanded Betty Field, it was handed over to Elliott Nugent who was so nervous about directing the film that he wrote a suicide note and planned to jump. He didn't but was apparently a wreck through much of the filming and not invited to go out drinking with everyone because he was an alcoholic. There were also issues with Ladd, as he was upset that all the male actors tower over him and he was having trouble remembering his lines. How much all this contributed to the listless nature of the film, I can't say but it moves in jagged slow-motion and never really moves you emotionally. It is in the end, a film about shitty shallow people that we don't care about. That I suppose though is the point. I just felt like they all needed a good kick in the ass to get them out of their shared ennui.



I have not seen either the Redford or DiCaprio versions and I read the book before most of you were born when I was going through that Great American Fiction phase that we all go through when young and hopeful - Hemingway, Steinbeck, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald and West (but never Faulkner). I vaguely recall liking the cynicism of the book, but don't really remember the plot details that well. But I gather that this follows the basics to some degree but without the poetry of the written word. The book is narrated by the character of Nick Carraway (Macdonald Carey) who is a neighbor of Gatsby in a plush wealthy area of Long Island and finds the enigmatic Gatsby fascinating. But in the film, Carraway is almost a side character who is really only in it as a counter-balance as he represents decency because he is not corrupted by money and privilege.



Gatsby is full center in the film either in a series of flashbacks or flashbacks within flashbacks or in the present. But he has no depth. Ladd turns him into this rather sad pitiful character who chases after a woman he had loved and lost years previously. Everything he did was in effort to be with her. The bootlegging, the killing, the ostentatious display of wealth was for her. But Daisy never is more than a paper thin pinhead married to another man. There is nothing about her that seems worthy of his obsession. When Ladd takes her on a tour of his gigantic opulent mansion - bootlegging was very very good to him - and he brags about the paintings, the furnishings and his hundreds of shirts made in London, you just feel sorry for him. He is so eager to impress her. He throws enormous parties where everyone goes, but no one knows him. Free booze and food is why the people came. He is a stranger in his own home.



I am not sure if the structure of the film works. Starting with Gatsby dead and the date scripted on the tombstone takes something away from the film especially if you have not read the book - then later in talking to Nick he has a long flashback about how he got started. Taken on by a rich man to work for him and he stares at his wife like he is seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time - but this really adds little to the film. Though him kissing her did pass the censors though I suspect only because he rejects her later. Then one of his men (Elisha Cook Jr) has a flashback as well. As does the Hussey character. It takes away from the narrative drive. Too many flashbacks spoiled the broth. Nothing here makes me want to watch the other two versions. Or re-read the book. In the fine cast, there is also a sexy Shelly Winters as the vamp, Howard Da Silva as her husband and Barry Sullivan as Daisy's husband.



The film had many issues with passing the censors. The implied adultery, the drinking, the parties, the empty lives, the low moral character. So the script had to be re-written to give it a moralistic covering. That explains the opening scene when Nick and the woman that he loves in the flashback (Ruth Hussey) visit Gatsby's grave many years later and he gives a proverb about a sinful life leading to death - and the ending in which Gatsby declares how wrong he has been sounds like a fig leaf to the censors. Fitzgerald would have been appalled, but that was the film industry back then.