Word: fitzgeralds
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Adler missed The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald...
...virtues of Fitzgerald's portrait of Stahr find their way into the filmed version, so do all the flaws of the rest of his book. One major problem is the treatment of Kathleen, Stahr's lover. Pinter and Kazan apparently took their cues from a line in the novel in which Stahr refers to Kathleen as a "Beautiful Doll." Ingrid Boulting is precisely that--a porcelain figure, heavily made-up and beautiful to look at, but seemingly ready to break at a touch. There is no real sensuality in her, none of the flesh-and-blood passion Fitzgerald probably means...
More disturbing than these casting slipups are the film's basic structural weaknesses. Given that Fitzgerald left half his book unwritten, Pinter had two choices: stick to the original and add an ending, or else use the fragmentary notes Fitzgerald left about the rest of his novel to flesh out its contours. He opted for the first, and more obvious, route. The result is an abrupt ending which telescopes events designed to occur months or years apart--Kathleen's departure and Stahr's loss of power--into a period of a few filmed minutes. The effect is more sudden than...
Kazan is unable to overlay Fitzgerald's materials with any subtlety or discipline of his own. When in doubt, he resorts to all the tried-and-true cinematic devices--the soft filters, the pastel tints--to create romantic mood. At the screenwriters' ball, Stahr watches his love through the mist of a water fountain; when they walk and talk together, she is dressed in lavender and ruffles, and the scaffolding of his house-to-be is bathed in purple light...
...point is clear: Stahr has tried to impose the structure of movie romance on an unromantic reality. His mission has been that of the artist, to bring order out of the chaos of everyday life. Kazan and Pinter have similarly attempted to give cinematic order to Fitzgerald's muddled work. If their mission has not been a complete success, their failure, like Stahr's, has at least provided the pleasure of romantic illusion along...