Twice As 'Great'

2
Oscar awards won by the 1974 "Great Gatsby" movie: to Theoni V. Aldredge for Best Costume Design, and to Nelson Riddle for Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation.

Nope, no Best Actress or Best Supporting Actor. But the acting overall was probably a bit better than I gave it credit for in the last post -- it's just that mortal human beings, even extraordinarily talented actors, are trying to do the impossible in playing all-time great literary characters. If you love a book, you have an image of the characters in your head, and they're probably not concrete enough for anybody to reenact -- they are great on an unrealistic level. Here in the material world, they can't be imitated.

So now that I'm in kinder, gentler mode, here are some things the movie did very well:

• Gatsby meets the Buchanan children -- This was a part that Robert Redford nailed. In fact, Redford may have conveyed this part better than the book did. When Gatsby is over at the Buchanan home, he's almost paralyzed when he sees their children. He's been so positive that Daisy's last five years are a mistake she can undo, no problem. The kids spell it out that it's not possible -- something real and irreversible has happened.
  
• The Valley of the Ashes -- Visually, the movie got more right than wrong. Among my favorite scenes was the Valley of the Ashes, the desolate place between West Egg and the City, where Wilson's garage is under the constant gaze of T.J. Eckelberg. It's powerful, and brings out the Wilsons' personalities -- Myrtle's disgust with her home and husband; George and his completely defeated personality. So, like, where is this place in real life? Some part of Queens? Did any part of Long Island actually look like that in the 1920s?
  
• Great Self-Restraint -- I respect the fact that they didn't work in the book's final paragraph. Why bother? It's such a masterpiece of the written word that it's going to be cheapened by inclusion in the movie, either through narration, or worse, through character dialogue. I hold to what I said before -- having the characters say some of the book's best lines in dialogue was cringe-inducing. Those of us who love the book know the ending almost word-for-word. For a movie adaptation, it was best left unsaid.