The Great Gatsby (1974)

Nicolson as Gatsby? NO.

I love this movie. Redford, Farrow and Waterston are perfect,

Fuck you OP.

I liked it when it came out. Redford was gorgeous. Farrow captured Daisy's essential callowness so well—an aspect of the character missing from many interpretations.

Alec Baldwin and his wife are like Tom and Daisy Buchanan: They come in and destroy things and then retreat behind their money. Instead of Daisy mowing down Tom's mistress, Baldwin shoots and kills the "Rust" camerawoman.

The only problem I really had was the casting of Jordan and Tom's mistress. They looked too much alike. At times, it was too tough to tell them apart. I think Jordan could've been replaced by a blonde.

R4 That's a very long reach you got going on there.

Brooke Adams is an extra in one of the party scenes. The camera moves down a long table of guests and then you think, “Oh, that’s Brooke Adams!”

Waterston never seemed particularly heterosexual to me.

I saw it for the first time on TCM last week. Sam Waterston was quite fuckable back then. The movie wasn't the trainwreck I thought it would be and the cast was great.

Lois Chiles did a series of high profile movies in the 1970s before people noticed she could barely act.

I watched it last night too but found it kind of airless and dull. I was struck by how handsome I thought Sam Waterston was, though his looks weren’t conventionally attractive. I thought he, Dern and Wilson gave good, direct performances, but Farrow and Black were self-conscious and prone to over-doing their scenes. And the extras in the party scenes acted like extras appearing in a madcap1920s party scene instead of people having fun in a period that happened to be the 1920s. Those scenes of supposed glamour seemed tacky more than anything else, but maybe that was the point.

Redford was at the height of his beauty but I’ve never considered him a very interesting or powerful actor and he isn’t here. I never believe his yearning for Daisy, he’s always too inscrutable and never seems vulnerable, just hesitant. He has the elusiveness of Gatsby down but not the naivete and deep emotion.

The whole thing felt dead and muffled despite the opulence. On balance, I prefer the Baz Luhrmann version from 2013.

People noticed very quickly Lois Chiles couldn’t act but she was beautiful, had a husky voive and was apparently pleasant and easy to work with so she got a few jobs trading on her looks after this, but nothing major. She’s perfect as Lynette Ridgeway in “Death on the Nile.”

She was smart enough to get out of the business and marry the wealthy Richard Gilder, a stockbroker and philanthropist — their names are all over the New York Historical Society. Gilder died in 2020, and she has kept a tastefully low profile since, though she is reportedly an artist shuttling between NYC and Houston. And per Wikipedia, she has given acting lessons, if you can believe that. Maybe she tutors beautiful daughters of the rich in elocution.

Redford sexy? HA!

The darker hair Redford had in this movie is close to his REAL color. The blond stuff came out of a bottle.

R13 - Babs Brolin

R15 = Robert Redford’s ugly German wife

Lean, dark Sam Waterston might have made a good Gatsby. You can believe that, no matter how polished his exterior, he might be a gangster, and someone with intense passions.

I the casting was spot on with the exception of the always “extra” Karen Black and the always inscrutable Robert Redford.

Dern and Waterson were the best.

Lois Chiles expected to be cast as Daisy and flipped out in anger when she wound up as the golf cheat Jordan (which is still a great role!).

I remember this from a thread about Robert Evans’ book, The Kid Stays in the Picture, but I can’t find it now. Does anyone remember the details?

Maggie/Josette from Dark Shadows also had a small part in the mistress's apartment scene. I love this movie. I thought the Leo version was shit. All flash and no substance and didn't like Gyllenhaal as Nick or that other one who played Daisy.

Tobey Maguire was Nick! Opposite Elizabeth Debicki (excellent) as Jordan.

Carey Mulligan was Daisy, and she was very dull. Mia Farrow’s inherent oddness and fragility with a hard metallic core made her much better casting.

I was such a weird movie kid. While my friends were all out playing I was in a movie theater watching films none of them wanted to see.Costa-Gavras' "Z" at eight years old by myself at a Saturday matinee. I saw Gatsby three times. Of course it was before VCRs and cable wasn't mainstream yet so if you liked a movie you had to go to the theater to see it again.

[quote]Redford sexy? HA!

You betcha.

Agree that this is a much better film than the 2013 Baz Luhrmann debacle.

Redford’s natural hair color was closer to red than blond, but a Hollywood law had it that women didn’t like redheads, so natural redheads like Danny Kaye and Redford had their hair dyed blonde until age naturally dulled the color. Now Redford walks around woth his hair a weird dark auburn. I don’t know who he thinks he’s fooling at 88.

And when you see him in his big hits from the ‘70s and ‘80s, it’s so obvious he’s a bottle blond, it’s ridiculous that no critics remarked on it. It proves that his withholding Don’t Look At Me routine was a cover for his intense vanity and self-seriousness.

Lois Chiles was quite good in her brief role in Broadcast News.

Karen Black won the Golden Globe but was surprisingly snubbed for the oscar. A rare instance where only one Globe nominee went on to be nominated for an oscar, (though Madeline would be nominated for her role in Blazing Saddles).

Karen Black – The Great Gatsby as Myrtle Wilson

Beatrice Arthur – Mame as Vera Charles

Jennifer Jones – The Towering Inferno as Lisolette Mueller

Madeline Kahn – Young Frankenstein as Elizabeth

Diane Ladd – Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore as Flo Castleberry

Karen Black was terrible in “The Great Gatsby,” chewed the scenery and mostly in closeup, which made her performance look even worse. She was probably nice to the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press and posed for individual photos with each member. That’s about all it took to get a nomination then.

I blame director Jack Clayton for his uninspired direction. And for a man who was one of the most talented Technicolor cinematographers in the history of movies, the images in this are often muddy, soft and the color design doesn’t pop at all.

[quote]R26 Lois Chiles was quite good in her brief role in Broadcast News.

Yes, well, that was almost a decade and a half later, and luckily she’d enrolled in Roy London’s acting class.

She’s interviewed for this - that might be her doing the voice over

There’s a heartless fashion model in Judith Krantz’s 1978 novel SCRUPLES who’s described as “killingly beautiful.” I always imagined Ms. Chiles as that character.

Lois Chiles spent most of her career being William Paley's mistress.

This movie is about clothes, or should I say wardrobe. Beautiful wardrobe.

Robert Redford is totally miscast in this movie because is is incapable of conveying emotion. He's never good with women on anything but the most superficial, they should have known that. Nice clothes, though.

Mia Farrow is actually pretty good as the flighty Daisy. She and Redford make absolutely no connection at all, as if they were filmed separately and spliced together.

Bruce Dern is an actor I've always felt a bit sorry for because he was usually stuck in edgy psycho roles. I really liked him in romantic comedy - in Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot.

What really makes me hate this movie is the hair on the men. Totally wrong, not close to the way men really wore it at the time its supposed to take place.

Loved Dern in Silent Running.

Good God, this film was dull. I've never made it through the whole thing.

[quote]I saw it for the first time on TCM last week. Sam Waterston was quite fuckable back then. The movie wasn't the trainwreck I thought it would be and the cast was great.

This is exactly what I said above. I can't believe how sexy and fuckable Waterston was in the movie, with such an understated, quiet performance. He said so much with his eyes and facial expressions, more than scripted words could say. He deserved an Oscar nomination.

[quote]Mia Farrow is actually pretty good as the flighty Daisy. She and Redford make absolutely no connection at all, as if they were filmed separately and spliced together.

When the movie was panned by critics, this is one of the things they pointed to - no chemistry between the two stars. Farrow admitted this was true, and blamed Redford. She said he was very cold and distant towards her off-camera, so they never got to know each other on a personal level. He would retreat to his trailer and watch the coverage of the Watergate investigation which was unfolding at the time, instead of mingling with the cast and crew. Of course, his next movie was 'All the President's Men'.

[quote]I think Jordan could've been replaced by a blonde.

No! Chiles was perfect in this role, as was her wardrobe. I think the book describes Jordan as being all in the colors of autumn leaves.

Not true, R36. There were two movies before All the President's Men - a stupid film about plane wing walking called The Great Waldo Pepper that came out in 1975, also Three Days of the Condor. In Condor, Redford has the same problem with DL fave Faye Dunaway as he had with Mia Farrow - no chemistry at all, he seems to have very little real interest. In some movies, Jane Fonda or Barbra Streisand can provoke feelings out of Redford, but it's mostly them doing all the work, he phones it in. As Jane Fonda said after their last collaboration, he has a problem with women.

I liked Jordan Chiles in this movie.....and I loved the music. I only wish they had somehow been able to use the final words of the novel:

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

OP, I think it followed the novel pretty closely.

Lois Chiles stopped acting when she married Wall Street financer Richard Gilder.

When he passed, she moved back to her native Houston.

I didn’t hate the Paul Rudd/Mira Sorvino version (ducks).

Passed what?

Now Redford walks around with a haystack wig on his head...

Don’t think he can walk anymore, R44.

Redford presents hole at r23!!! 😃

Mia’s wig always troubled me in this film. Party City?

The music! I forgot how cornball all the Myrtle musical cues are — so old-fashioned and melodramatic.

R25, DL favorite Pauline Kael wrote in her review of The Sting that Redford had gone beyond platinum blonde into ——- a word I can’t recall. A little help Paulinettes?

[quote]R47 Mia’s wig always troubled me in this film. Party City?

She wrote in her memoir she hated that wig, calling it “stiff.”

Plutonium. And he looked great with plutonium hair.

I watch this film on mute. I find it visually stunning, but I care not for the film itself. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books, but it never seems to translate well to the screen. This 70s version is such a beautiful production though, from the fashions (as mentioned) to the cinematography to the cars (classic car collector) to the mansions, the set design and on and on. I love to view it, but that's all.

The Baz Luhrmann treatment looks like a hooker's visual recounting of a recent acid trip. I suppose his motto is: More is more.

R52 Baz's take would've been a LOT better if they didn't use that terrible anachronistic soundtrack. Aside from the DH Orchestral Version of Lana del Rey's Young and Beautiful, the whole thing sounds like shit.

[quote] (the 2.5 hours fly by).

Said no one ever.

R40 Many thought too closely.

I remember it was widely reported that Mia Farrow had a temperature (the flu?) when she tested for Daisy.

Seeing this in 1974, at the beach where we went on vacation (either shortly before or after seeing Mame, at the same theater), I remember people laughed at some of the wrong places. Maybe since it's now an "old movie," an old movie that is set in an even older time period, it doesn't provoke the same reactions. It seemed, at the time, pretentious and slightly unreal--and overacted by some of the cast. As well as slow and dull. But then the seats in that old barn of a theater were wooden, with no padding.

This is another film almost ruined by Redford. He’s so stiff and delivers lines like set pieces. He’s awful in Out of Africa and not much better in The Way We Were. Bryant Brown should been opposite Streep in “Africa”. Redford is much more talented as a director and producer. There are exceptions when he’s carefully cast (Butch Cassidy).

I liked Redford in Barefoot in the Park. He was funny. Later (like Gregory Peck) he seemed to just get more and more wooden.

Redford character in Barefoot in the Park = stuffed shirt

Perfect casting.

Redford was an LA kid who surfed at Hermosa Beach. Skipped school a lot, and I think was known for doing some dangerous stunts with his buddies. Not sure he was a stuffed shirt, even though he played one on Broadway and in the movies.

Robert Redford #1 Bleached redhead:

Robert Redford #1 Plutonium blond

Redford was always ghastly.

And, him winninng the directing Oscar over Scorsese was ludicrous. Ordinary People is a fine movie but it's a well cast Lifetime movie with a budget.

Buck would have never called Ordinary People a Lifetime movie!

There was no such thing as a Lifetime movie when OP was released. So Lifetime movies are just low rent versions of “Ordinary People”.

Robert Redford was originally offered the role of Guy in ROSEMARY’S BABY.

It would have been very creepy to have someone so wholesome looking playing a villain.

[quote]Redford was always ghastly.

R63 = Gloria Upson

[quote]Skipped school a lot, and I think was known for doing some dangerous stunts with his buddies

Where did you get that info, R60? Redford was known for being a drunk, not a surfer. He was kicked out of college for his drinking.

What the heck did Beatty and Nicholson have against Ali McGraw?

R68 I got it from the Hermosa Beach Daily Breeze newspaper, covering an appearance he made there.

I don't really understand the comment that he wasn't a surfer, he was a drunk. How are those two things related? He was too drunk to surf?

The article in question.

I liked Farrow, Chiles and Black. Even as a kid I enjoyed watching them. Redford being blond was was good. He was OK. Gatsby is cipher so that works. One of the points of the novel is that nobody really knows Gatsby and we get to understand him as much as possible from everyone's different interactions. Any one character cannot know Gatsby because he is deeply inauthentic but touched by grace, and allure.

Redford darkened his hair to play Gatsby, if that hasn't already been mentioned. It was publicized a lot at the time. (And I'm old enough to remember it was a big deal.)

Some of the ties and the lapels (and maybe the collars) were too wide for the 1920s. They were wide in the 1970s.

R70 = dumb as a shrub

R73, dear, Redford skipped some of his bleaching sessions and let them do auburn for Gatsby. What was written at the time was PR. I’m old enough to remember too.

AI Overview

Yes, Robert Redford was known to have surfed during his high school years in Southern California

He grew up in and around Los Angeles and spent his teen years surfing.

.Details:

He is reported to have learned how to surf in Hermosa Beach.

He surfed and engaged in other sports like climbing high-rise buildings during his high school years.

He was also described as having lugged a 40-pound wooden surfboard up and down the cliffs of San Onofre.

Redford also prodcued the surf doc, Momentum Generation (2018). I'd say he had some interest in the sport.

[quote]R69 What the heck did Beatty and Nicholson have against Ali McGraw?

The fact that, while a box office star thanks to LOVE STORY, she had the acting ability of a tree stump?

[quote] And, him winninng the directing Oscar over Scorsese was ludicrous. Ordinary People is a fine movie but it's a well cast Lifetime movie with a budget.

“Lifetime movie” is code for feminine, as opposed to the masculine Raging Bull, about monosyllabic morons.

How is Ordinary People feminine? Because it's about a family?

Ordinary People reads as feminine because it’s domestic and about emotional frigidity; that’s why (male) critics have spent decades tarring it with phrases like “Lifetime movie”.

It has three major male characters and only one main female character, but okay.

Chiles was fine but imagine how much better Angelica Huston would have been in that part.

There needs to be an Epstein reboot of this classic

I've heard of this Israeli intelligence-agent child-rapist & trafficker cum elite-financier as a "Gatsby-like" figure so many times.

I want to see this movie