But what really sinks the Redford/Farrow version of Gatsby is a self-conscious pacing that makes Stanley Kubrick’s stately Barry Lyndon seem like an MTV video in comparison. That’s also the same problem that plagues 1976′s The Last Tycoon, Elia Kazan’s last movie, with a young Robert DeNiro in a thinly disguised portrayal as doomed Hollywood wunderkind Irving Thalberg.
Most recently, in 2000, Mira Sorvino starred as Daisy in a made-for-TV version, with relatively unknown actor Toby Stephens cast as the Artist Formerly Known as Jay Gatz. (There’s a clip online here if you dare…) If you’re getting the sense that the quality of Gatsby adaptations is declining exponentially, I’d say you’re absolutely right. One reason, as Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote in 2005, is the Death of the Grown-Up temperament of today’s stars:
I’m a fan of old movies, the black-and-whites from the 1930s and 1940s, in part because of what they reveal about how American culture has changed. The adults in these films carry themselves differently. They don’t walk and speak the way we do. It’s often hard to figure out how old the characters are supposed to be—as though they were portraying a phase of the human life-cycle that we don’t have any more.Take the 1934 film Imitation of Life. Here Claudette Colbert portrays a young widow who builds a successful business. (Selling pancakes, actually. Well, it’s more believable if you see the whole movie.) She’s poised and elegant, with the lustrous voice and magnificent cheekbones that made her a star. But how old is she supposed to be? In terms of the story, she can’t be much more than thirty, but she moves like a queen. Today even people much older don’t have that kind of presence—and Colbert was thirty-one when the movie came out.
How about Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, smoldering away in Red Dust? They projected the kind of sexiness that used to be called “knowing,” a quality that suggested experienced confidence. When the film came out Gable was thirty-one and Harlow ten years younger. Or picture the leads of The Philadelphia Story. When it was released in 1940, Katharine Hepburn was thirty-three, Cary Grant thirty-six, and Jimmy Stewart thirty-two. Yet don’t they all look more grownup than actors do nowadays?
Characters in these older movies appear to be an age nobody ever gets to be today. This isn’t an observation about the actors themselves (who may have behaved in very juvenile ways privately); rather, it is about the way audiences expected grownups to act. A certain manner demonstrated adulthood, and it was different from the manner of children, or even of adolescents such as Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.
Today actors preserve an unformed, hesitant, childish quality well into middle age. Compare the poised and debonair Cary Grant with Hugh Grant, who portrayed a boyish, floppy-haired ditherer till he was forty. Compare Bette Davis’ strong and smoky voice with Renée Zellweger’s nervous twitter. Zellweger is adorable, but she’s thirty-five. When will she grow up?
In a review in the Village Voice of the film The Aviator, Michael Atkinson dubbed our current crop of childish male actors “toddler-men.” “The conscious contrast between baby-faced, teen-voiced toddler-men movie actors and the golden age’s grownups is unavoidable,” he wrote. “Though DiCaprio is the same age here as Hughes was in 1934, he may not be convincing as a thirty-year-old until he’s fifty.” Nobody has that old-style confident authority any more. We’ve forgotten how to act like grownups.
That will likely be the theme next year at the movies as well. According to the Internet Movie Database, Leonardo DiCaprio is scheduled to don the white suit and stare longingly at the green light at the end of the dock in 2012. Tobey Maguire, best known for playing Spider-Man at the movies, will be slinging webs of narrative exposition as Nick Carraway.
And speaking of revising Gatsby for today’s “Death of the Grown-Up” audiences, the perfect script for this version is all set to go.
You know, I enjoyed The Aviator. If only because it somewhat gave Howard Hughes his due, and featured a great scene where the conservative Hughes told off the oh-so-liberal Hepburns. Though I would have preferred a more realistic Spruce Goose (I despise CGI, especially when it comes to airplanes).
Still, while I have never heard of that review you quoted, that phrase “toddler-men” is a fantastic description of what we not only see in Hollywood, but what is going on around us. Where has the manly-man gone? Just the other day I jokingly quoted Predator (1987): “Bunch of slack-jawed faggots around here! This stuff will make you a G__ d__ sexual tyrannosaurus! Just like me.” You couldn’t get away with that sort of line anymore, but then again, we don’t have that sort of movie anymore either. Remember the Predator remake? Arnold’s old role was taken by Adrian Brody. Sheesh. And instead of an all-American he-man team, we are given a multicultural, politically-correct team. Pretty good indicator of where things have been going.
Kids wear skinny jeans and haircuts that I was under the impression belonged to women. I’m one of those who thinks that kids are maturing too fast, but its not really maturity, its psychological independence. Their role models are trashy, snotty brats lacking effective authority figures. They can dance and flirt but could never chop wood for an hour. But what of grown men and women? I dare someone to name an actress who is truly ladylike on and off camera. (I might argue that, of the women in Hollywood, Zellweger seems more grown-up than her contemporaries. Similarly, DiCaprio has matured quite-a-bit in the last decade. I’m not sure they are that much in control of their speaking voices.) Furthermore, as an American, when is the last time you saw a man reflect your ideal of the American man? Would that be John Wayne? I enjoyed Liam Nesson killing baddies without mercy in Taken but the man is a Scot. Still, I’m in agreement – after all, Toby McGuire as Nick? That’s pretty sad.
Generally agree, though I’d like to offer up Christian Bale and Ashley Judd as two modern actors capable of projecting that old-fashioned grown-up gravitas when called for. Among those a tad older, Michelle Forbes, Marcia Gay Harden, Callie Thorne and, as you mentioned, Liam Neeson all qualify. Neeson, by the way is Irish, not Scots. Being of Scots extraction myself, I’d love to claim him as one of us, but he’s Hibernian, not Caledonian. Going even a bit further back, there’s Tom Selleck. So adult-acting adult actors are, indeed, thin on the ground these days, but they do exist.
You’re right. The worse part is, I knew I was wrong on Neeson yet I went and got it wrong anyway. I was pretty tired, though.
“I’m a fan of old movies, the black-and-whites from the 1930s and 1940s, in part because of what they reveal about how American culture has changed. The adults in these films carry themselves differently. They don’t walk and speak the way we do. It’s often hard to figure out how old the characters are supposed to be—as though they were portraying a phase of the human life-cycle that we don’t have any more.”
THANK YOU! It’s about time somebody said it. I am so very sick and tired of Hollywood’s obsession with teens or early twenty-somethings in the movies. Enough already! The reason why the movies in the 1930s and 1940s seem so very different is because they had ADULTS in them, or at least young actors and actresses behaving like adults. Today, actors think that if they curse enough, scream enough, emote enough, are violent enough, and have enough sex, they can pass themselves off as adults, instead of the little children they really are. You can even see it at the Academy Awards, when they have to struggle, yes struggle, to come up with five movies each year that are almost worthy of the award. But all you see in movies today are Transformers, Avatar, animated characters, superheroes, teens, tweens, and kids in their 20s.
Maybe, just maybe, TV holds a better future for movies. At least HBO and Showtime are coming up with movies or a mini-series with actual adults in them with scripts that are written by adults for adults.
Somehow, we’ve lost our way in Hollywood. In the 1930s to the 1950s, almost everyone in movies (with a few exceptions) were adults. And the public reacted to this by wanting to act more, well, like adults. Look at the people in the movies. Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd, Tyron Power, or Robert Taylor, to name just a precious few, looked, acted, and behaved like adults. But today, we have almost nothing but actors in their 20s or, at best, in their early 30s, as role models for kids and expect the rest of the world to behave like them. Nope, people ARE influenced by what they see, and all they’re seeing these days are a lot of kids dressing up and trying to sound like adults. Or, worse, Hollywood doesn’t even bother with reality and stays with animated or computer-generated films. Either way, it’s about time Hollywood grew up. Again.
I very rarely go to the movies. I do watch some TV. Comedy such that in Jerry Seinfield re-runs is funny, but shows a culture of extended pre-adulthood, with people having teenage relationship and situational roles well into their thirties.
I did enjoy the HBO series The Wire. Great acting, strong writing, super story telling and directing, and some adult characters.
The Big Lebowski had the same star as the remake of True Grit. In one he was manly. In one he wasn’t.
I think that the perfect example of the “death of the adult” is the current group of Hollywood stars. Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are fifty year olds acting as if they are still teenagers. They personfy the problem today which is the tendency of people in their forties and fifties wanting to act as if tOlhey were teenagers. Look in any American mall and observe how the so called adults dress; they ape the current trend of teenagers. Actors in older movies usually spoke like adults and behaved like adults in contrast to giggly teenager chatter emanating from Julie Roberts or Tom Hanks adolescent prattling as he tries to act as if he were a real adult. Our current culture has no room for adult and responsible behavior and this explains the popularity of big government poltics, the Americans want someone to take care of them just like Mommy and Daddy did years ago; sad when the American who wants to be taken into care is way past forty. Old movies are an insight to what we were and what we have become; sad. The future of America is very shaky and there are no adults around to take care of things; a childish president who has never really had a job tells us he will fix the economy; what a joke! O tempora O mores.
Its not a Gatsby version, but I’m reminded of the great early-1980′s “Brideshead Revisited.” What style, beauty and depth it presented, from the pre-World War II years of Britain and Venice into the grim drabness of wartime itself. Having Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, Jeremy Irons, Claire Bloom, Stephane Audran, Simon Jones and Olivier didn’t hurt.
But one of the best parts of this mini-series was Phoebe Nicholls, portraying the dedicated Catholic Cordelia, from her precocious and awkward teen years through disappointed, weary yet still deeply faithful adulthood. During a quiet walk when she briefly mentions the “thwarted” quality of her life, its devastating.
And I strongly agree with TheGMan and Libertyship46 about the failure of much of current Hollywood to portray adulthood, and especially manhood, compared to the glory days of the 30′s through the 50′s.
P.S. Maybe the great Whit Stillman can help inspire a renewal of adulthood in Hollywood, if he ever gets in gear again.
‘…I think Tom Wolfe…once dismissed the movie as “Fitzgerald as interpreted by the Garment District”….’
His own “Bonfire of the Vanities” didn’t fare much better when adapted for the screen.
I’ve probably read Gatsby 5 times. My opinion is that you can’t translate it to film. Some books are like that. Scott Fitzgeralds prose is so luminous that you form images of everything you read. It’s like what my son used to say about radio, “You can see the pictures better”
Now about Lois Chiles. Rrrrrrrr. Snort.
Di Caprio is perfect casting for Gatsby. Definitely an underrated actor. He’s the best of the ‘pretty boys’ by a long way, and better than most others. ‘Titanic’ for example – a blowsy, overblown film, with everyone in it hamming it up to the rafters. Di Caprio cruises all the way through, very natural and believable. He does nothing, yet everything at the same time, while everyone else is straining to ‘act’. I haven’t seen many Di Caprio films, but those I’ve seen him in, he’s been very good. McGuire as Nick doesn’t work, though.
DiCaprio is a fine actor. His main problem, as an actor, is his baby face. He did well in “The Aviator,” but he really didn’t fit.
As for earlier actors appearing more adult, I believe that, unfortunately, much of that was related to how cigarettes affected their voices. Deadly cigarettes, better scripts and better directors can do wonders.
I know I’m in the minority on this, but a mediocre book will usually produce a mediocre movie. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is remarkably well composed, far above his drunken average, but comes across as no more than a sociological bodice ripper.
Sounds like you’re confusing comedies with dramas. Does DiCaprio act like a toddler-man in Inception? Are they in the Dark Knight movies? Even in a comedy like “Tropic Thunder” (from Leonardo it’s a small jump to Robert Downey Jr.), there doesn’t seem to be as many t-m’s.
Good film critiques, but I think it’s tough to group them in particular around F. Scott’s original source material. Any film of TGG will be fundamentally flawed no matter what because what made the story beautiful cannot be projected on a screen; it’s too personal, individual and remains within each reader…yes, the artifacts can be seen and compared from film to film, different cars, styles, etc. But the power of Scott Fitzgerald’s words exists between the physical “things” seen in a movie.
I think Gatsby is wasted on the young, I was forced to read it in high school and watch the horrible film. I reread it when I was 28, and all of a sudden, it made sense. Really is no point in reading it in high school, your experiences are to limited to grasp the underlying context that really makes the book great.
Voices! Even the kids in the old films had more grownup voices than the “stars” of my generation.
I couldn’t let this post go without linking to the Nintendo version of Great Gatsby.
http://greatgatsbygame.com/
OK, movie meanderings:
I agree that ” The Great Gatsby” is a tough book to turn into a movie.
For a movie about average folks, how about Paul Giamatti in “Win, Win?” He was excellent in the HBO John Adams I am not crazy about movies these days, but I think that Tom Hanks, De Niro, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Ben Afleck etc. hold up reasonably well against the now-mythologized Grant, Gable, Waynes. That era has become romanticized and there is something about the traditional hero role, forced as it may have been, that righties love. That having been said, I think that “Red River” and “The Duelist” were damned good movies. How does Humphrey Bogart stand up as a righty hero? “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” is one of the great movies, although it is missing a hero.
How about last year’s “True Grit?” It was a great movie. As for current actresses, you may not care for Angelina Jolie’s politics, but the woman has presence.
Following are just a few generally acknowledged great performances from what you wrongly refer to as the “romanticized” era. I wouldn’t call any of these performances “forced”….
John Wayne in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” and “The Quiet Man”
Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca” and “The Caine Mutiny”
Alan Ladd in “Shane”
Clark Gable in “Gone With the Wind,” or just about anything else
Joseph Cotten in “The Third Man”–maybe not strictly a Hollywood movie, but Cotten was an excellent American actor
Jimmy Stewart in just about anything
John Hodiak, Van Johnson and the others in “Battleground,” which was way better than the chatty ’90′s guys in the mostly awful “Saving Private Ryan”
If only “Righties” can appreciate these roles and many others from the classic Hollywood period, than it doesn’t speak well of non-”Righties.”
Granted, your list has some good movies on it, and we can agree on “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” although I find “Shane” tediously melodramatic.
What is your problem with “Saving Private Ryan?” Are you some kind of “commie prevert?” I think that Gen. Ripper found out about your preversions and you killed him…and are also going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
Actually I rode the bomb with Major Kong and somehow survived–it gave me extraordinary powers of perception.
Regarding “Saving Private Ryan,” its one of the most shamefully over-rated movies. As I’ve frequently commented elsewhere, flying body parts and gushing blood do not make a good war movie. And I do not consider “Saving Private Ryan” a “tribute” to our American fighting men of World War II. Not at all. Instead, it is a tribute to narcissistic, talky, limousine-liberal 90′s guys and their feelings of guilt and inadequacy about their forebears who fought in World War II and won the Cold War.
I could go on and on, but I’ll try to restrain myself. One of the most disgraceful things about SPR is that it belittles the motive of patriotism, which was still a potent force in the 1940′s, whatever any smartass revisionists will say. If you read accounts of the time, this comes through. And while I wasn’t there in the war, I’ve known several men who were, including my Dad. Also, World War II American fighting men were not angels, but they were at least more stoic than what is presented in SPR.
The whole business about saving the dumbass Ryan is extremely contrived, as is so much else about the movie. Spielberg knows how to manipulate his audiences and tug heartstrings sometimes, but that’s also not enough for a movie to be good.
By slightly moving their eyebrows, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Clark Gable, Robert Taylor and other aforementioned actors of the 30′s through the 50′s were able to show the character of manhood much better than the twerps of SPR and other narcissists of recent Hollywood.
Sounds to me that you have let your political and cultural agendas ruin a great movie for you. There certainly was a lot of patriotic schlock made during the war. I didn’t find SPR to be at all anti-patriotic. What did you want: “Pride of the Marines?”
I’m gonna try to kill two birds with one stone here:
As for SPR: I’ve always maintained that it was Speilberg’s last good film. I never found it insulting or anti-patriotic, nor did I find Band of Brothers to be so. The language was more Vietnam-ish than WWII, but otherwise it didn’t seem like it was trying to insult my intelligence. But The Pacific on the other hand…
Most people I’ve met who didn’t like SPR, hated it because it wasn’t 100% realistic. I argue that 1: Film is supposed to be an artistic medium (nobody had to be told that Forrest Gump was about Baby Boomers, right?) and 2: It shocked people to think about WWII in a more graphic way than ever before. Symbolically the characters go through Hell (Omaha Beach), on a mission they don’t fully understand yet (their questioning of the mission), to save one guy (sacrifice). When the Captain dies at the end he says, “Earn this,” and the film cuts to the old man. It seems to me to be a rather honorable call from our past to the present day.
My other comment is for a post made a little earlier. In reference to adults acting like kids and the reference to Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts; I’m assuming you saw Larry Crowne. Not a bad flick compared to most of the crap out there (not sleeping with the drunken teacher was unexpected considering those involved), but it was disgusting to see Tom Hanks in hipster outfits complete with skinny jeans.
Agreed on SPR.
Were you part of the skirmish we had here (or was it the old Powerline, back when responders ran the place?) over The Pacific a while ago? Who can remember? I do vaguely remember some people going nuts because of a couple (to me) relatively minor moments. Was it that the Japanese were not bad enough or that we were not good enough; our atrocities vs their atrocities?
I have to agree with you on Saving Private Ryan. When I watched the movie, it struck me as unbelievably nihilistic. I think a lot of vets liked it because of its gritty, realistic portrayals of horror and sacrifice — but to what end? Ultimately the squad dies, it seems, for nothing. Some general decided Ryan Must Be Saved, but we really see nothing that justifies this, apart from the “last son” setup. Why does the Captain die? What does any of it mean? There were existential stakes in WWII. But all we see is a group of battle-weary, shell-shocked troops wandering around the countryside with no driving purpose, just a meaningless mission none of them believed in. And the math at the core of the mission is inverted — we lost 400,000 men in WWII, but they saved hundreds of millions from the totalitarians. In Saving Private Ryan, a squad loses most of their lives to save one guy. Then he is supposed to “earn it”? What does that mean?
Dwight, I don’t recall commenting on it here, but I could be mistaken. I am a military historian by trade, so I have to bite my tounge sometimes when it comes to Hollywierd’s mistakes. That said, I just didn’t think The Pacific was a very good series in general. It jumped between three guys – and more importantly three different units – making it hard to develop a relationship with any one character. Also, it seemed that the screenwriters were trying to make it more nihilistic, but this could be an unintended result from jumping between characters. The emotional bond that would have led to empathy for these Marines is missing, so consequently you don’t understand their hatred for the Japanese. If this was an intended result, shame on the screenwriters, if not, it’s just poor quality writing. Still, the claims that it was US-bashing make more sense when you hear cringe-worthy lines like when Sledge asks a Marine about the news of the A-bomb, the other guys smiles and says, “I don’t know, but it killed a lot of Japs.” No duh. Bombs generally do. I like the sets and the costumes, but otherwise, I just don’t think it was very well done.
bbbeard, I was trying to say that, in my opinion, SPR works as a symbolic piece – hence the reference to Forrest Gump (Forrest and Jenny aren’t real, but they symbolize a generation). The goal of SPR seems to be an attempt to put the lives lost in the war into perspective. It’s not just Ryan who is saved, it is all of us. But hey, I’ll be the first to admit that I may be giving Spielberg too much credit.
The question would be whether or not it was a reasonable take on WWII, not whether or not it followed YOUR take on said event. I am a bit of an amateur historian on local history, and continually bump up against others, who may be a bit, er, possessive about said history.
In the context of the 70% maybe? of the population who could care less about ANY history, “The Pacific” cared and brought attention to it. To the extent that it is produced and directed by liberals, a certain number of people obviously feel the need to automatically bash it (the Mel Gibson vs lefties dynamic in reverse.)
What I find a bit disturbing is that I infer from some of the comments here that history should project a patriotic image. History should not avoid any clear and obvious facts or phenomena which fly in the face of the case being made, but it is not obligated to support any particular lefty or righty agenda.
It is also interesting that Egil’s rap on SPR and your concerns with “The Pacific” involve a sense nihilism “felt” in the respective pieces . As in “war is hell, and it is only hell” according to the tall red-headed depressive who marched to the sea. Still early in the sesqui-centennial, I find it interesting to read the number of analysts who are questioning the “meaning” of 600,000 deaths in “the War of the Rebellion/Northern Aggression.” It happened.
No film of Gatsby will satisfy very many people. There are many ways to approach it, too many. The book reveals and conceals at the same time.
Try an audio book reading. Or two. It can’t hurt, and sometimes clarifies.
I like the remark that radio (drama) lets you see the pictures better.
DiCaprio is fine. I have admired him ever since The Basketball Diaries. But like most actors (and directors too – Scorcese) he sometimes gets into a mess.
I regard The Aviator as 98% mess, there is no accounting for tastes.
This article is absolutely true. Hollywood makes its spectacle films to appeal to kids,tweeners,teens and twenty somethings and their taste encompasses vampire/werewolf love stories, comic-book/super heroes, animated feature films and of course horror films.I doubt that a new version of The Great Gatsby would appeal to this crowd.Di Caprio has done some good films but he is always the kid at heart,please watch Revolutionary Road,or Blood Diamond or Body of Lies for proof. He isn’t a bad actor just not a very evolved one.But this Gatsby role is for Oscar consideration as he doesn’t possess an Oscar.Di Caprio, Damon, Pitt,Cruise and Clooney haven’t had to be adults on screen,it isn’t demanded of them. They are supposed to be always young in attitude and demeanor,Hollywood demands it of them.As for adults on screen,well Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington,and Daniel Day Lewis come to mind.Crowe is the same generation, at 47 as Pitt and Cruise.It wouldn’t hurt for Hollywood overall to aim its movies at adults.
To Dwight at 8:06 PM…. SPR a great movie? Hardly. I think you need to get out a little more. Or at least watch a lot more old movies to be able to make a decent comparison.
And as I said, narcissism is not my cup of tea in movies.
Narcissism, eh? There you go again. YOU clearly have more of a political and cultural agenda when you evaluate a movie, sort of like lefties reactiong to a Mel Gibson movie. You have 90′s weepy men on the brain, and presto, 90′s weepy men (wasn’t it so degrading to a robust American male to have to see an old guy weeping in front of his old Captain’s grave?) appear in SPR. Eeech! John Wayne would never do that!
As for watching old movies, where do you want to start? All Quiet on the Western Front? Renoir? Paths of Glory, Das Boot, The Bridge, Guadalcanal Diary, The Longest Day. I have seen more war movies than I can remember, and probably, given my age many more, and many more “classic” ones than you have, but then, who cares?
“Honey, remember the eighties,”
Can you say ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’?
Ray-Bans are optional.