The series A posteriori le cinéma is intended to be an opportunity to celebrate the 7the art by revisiting flagship titles that celebrate important anniversaries.
In a huge deserted property, the camera wanders from room to room, like a ghost. The analogy is all the more appropriate as the diffuse echo of a past party emanates, as if the place were haunted. No, the scene is not taken from The Shining (Shining, the child of light), by Stanley Kubrick, but from the film The Great Gatsby (Gatsby the magnificent), by Jack Clayton, released in March 1974. A splendid but controversial adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal novel, the film stars Robert Redford and Mia Farrow as star-crossed lovers, he nouveau riche, she a well-born socialite. What hits you after 50? The absolute brilliance of Clayton and Farrow.
The Great Gatsby tells the tragic fate of Jay Gatsby who, after making his fortune, tries to win back the love of his life, Daisy, now married to Tom Buchanan, a vile heir.
Robert Evans, head of the Paramount studio, launched the project around 1970 with the aim of casting his fiancée, actress Ali MacGraw, opposite Warren Beatty. The actor declined, like Jack Nicholson after him. Robert Redford ardently wanted to play Gatsby (like Warner Baxter and Alan Ladd before him, then Leonardo DiCaprio after him).
As for MacGraw, she left Evans for Steve McQueen. Faye Dunaway campaigned to play Daisy, but Mia Farrow got the role.
The hiring of Jack Clayton as director caused a scandal. How could an Englishman do justice to this “quintessentially” American novel?
In interview at Sight and Soundthe director of the masterpiece The Innocents (Innocents), according to Henry James, answers: “Apart from the romantic side of the film, and Gatsby’s obsession [et je crois bien comprendre l’obsession], it’s a story of classes. This is something that pleases me. Didn’t Marx say that there are differences between classes, but few differences between nationalities – between rich Englishmen and rich Americans? Fitzgerald of course said it too: the rich are different from us. »
During the famous prologue in the unoccupied villa, the splendor literally has the value of an empty shell. As Neil Sinyard describes in his book on Jack Clayton: “The camera scans the gold objects on Gatsby’s dressing table and is drawn hypnotically to the photos of Daisy Buchanan, which begin to dominate the credits sequence. Only a slightly incongruous image disturbs the atmosphere: a fly on an opened sandwich, perhaps evoking the passage of time, but also the beginnings of rot beneath the luxurious surface. »
An elegant way of suggesting that appearances are deceiving, and that something disastrous is afoot. As in his previous Room at the Top, what interested Clayton was the real criticism of the classes behind the false love story. False, because it is one-sided.
Divergent visions
Screenwriter of the film, Francis Ford Coppola was one of Jack Clayton’s main detractors. It should be noted that Coppola agreed to write the screenplay for financial reasons before the release of The Godfather (The Godfather), in 1972. When Gatsby took to the stage in 1974, Coppola had become the darling of Hollywood.
At New Yorker, Coppola said that year: “There are scenes in there that pursue the wrong goals and are, in my opinion, ruined. The same scene would have worked wonderfully if someone else had directed the film. »
Another person like… Coppola?
Among other examples of disagreement: Daisy’s famous line “Rich girls don’t marry poor boys.” In the script, Coppola instead had the character say: “Poor boys don’t marry rich girls. » For his part, Clayton found it more accurate to have Daisy express herself from his own perspective, and not from Gatsby’s: The Innocents has The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne Passing by The Pumpkin EaterClayton was known for the complexity of his female characters (not the strength of Coppola, as great as many of his films were).
In his book, Sinyard cites a more fundamental divergence between the director and the screenwriter: “As Clayton explains in a note written after his meeting with Coppola: ‘Daisy really belongs to Tom; she belongs to Tom’s background and class.” In the same note, Clayton makes a very interesting and astute comment about Daisy: “She is as obsessed with herself as Gatsby is with her — and that is actually, strangely enough, their common bond.” Hence the narcissistic imagery associated with Daisy in the film. »
Sinyard continues by giving two eloquent examples of this narcissism highlighted by Clayton through his production.
“Unlike the novel, the reunion between Gatsby and Daisy takes place through a mirror as he appears behind her. Mirrors are omnipresent in the film, in tune with a vain and narcissistic society, but also in tune with a film about the fragility of romantic illusions. In the last hotel scene, when Gatsby confesses to Tom Buchanan his love for Daisy, the latter’s instinctive movement is to turn towards the hotel mirror – as if by looking at herself she could avoid facing face it and cling to a romantic illusion that is in imminent danger of disintegrating. »
Daisy’s misfortune
However, Clayton does not condemn Daisy. On the contrary, he portrays her as a prisoner of the dictates of an era. In a composition that is too little praised, Mia Farrow suggests immense distress beneath the veneer of frivolity. His line about his daughter is devastating in this case: “I hope she grows up to be a beautiful little idiot.” That’s the best a girl can hope for these days: to be a beautiful little idiot. »
This wish, formulated as a complaint, indicates that Daisy perfectly understands everything that is happening and cannot change anything. Contrary to (misleading) appearances, Daisy is not a “beautiful little idiot”, and that is her misfortune.
With hindsight, we can understand the animosity of some towards Clayton’s anti-romantic, even Marxist, reading. In the humidity of summer, Gatsby believes he has a chance, even though the die has long been cast…
Which makes the prologue — yes, everything brings us back to it — all the more inspired. Indeed, as Clayton ultimately reveals to us, the opening sequence in the vacant estate is actually set at the end of the story, after Gatsby’s few relatives have gone to his funeral.
We think back to the fly, attracted not by the smell of the sandwich, but by that of death.
In the meantime, all the vaporous splendor distilled by the director and his director of photography Douglas Slocombe (Raiders of the Lost Ark/The Raiders of the Lost Ark) will only have been an illusion, like the love story.
Power of bewitchment
Far from adhering to this elegiac atmosphere, of deadly cynicism, the studio promoted a great sentimental work. The opposite of the film, in short. As Mia Farrow recalls in her autobiography, the “delicate” The Great Gatsby was sold as a new Gone with the Wind (Gone with the wind).
Winner of the Oscar for costumes and music (jazz, of course), the film was a popular success and, despite mixed reviews, had fervent admirers, including Tennessee Williams, and especially Frances Scott Fitzgerald, the daughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald .
“She gave a lot of wise advice and […] always insisted that his father would have loved the film,” notes Neil Sinyard.
Fact, The Great Gatsby version 1974 has a real power to bewitch. Once it’s finished, we’ll want more. In this respect, Clayton’s film is like the beautiful season that Gatsby longs for when he confides, unaware that he will soon die: “Summer is almost over. It’s sad, isn’t it? It makes you want to, I don’t know, reach out and hold him. »
The film The Great Gatsby is available on VOD on most platforms.