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Every Great Gatsby Movie, Compared: 2013, 1974, 1949

Book Guides

If you've looked up The Great Gatsby movie, you've probably realized that there is more than one. So which of The Great Gatsby movies you should watch? Wondering if you can skip reading the book?

We have a complete guide to each of the Great Gatsby movie adaptations, as well as some advice for writing about the movies!

The Great Gatsby Movies 101

Gatsby has had four film adaptations, with two especially big-budget, well-known movies: the 1974 version starring Robert Redford and the 2013 film with Leonardo DiCaprio. There was also a silent film adaptation made in 1926, just one year after the novel came out , but that film has been lost, with only a one-minute trailer that survives to attest to its existence.

Some elements of the film adaptations have strongly influenced people's vision and understanding of the novel, but there isn't one "best" Great Gatsby movie or one best Great Gatsby cast, or even one movie that has fully captured the spirit of the novel . (Compare this with To Kill a Mockingbird , which has just one major film adaptation that many consider not only worthy of the book, but also to be one of the best movies of all time.)

So, to be clear: none of the Great Gatsby movies can replace the experience of reading the novel . And there isn't even one obvious choice for the best adaptation to watch!

However, watching one (or, if you're ambitious, all!) of the adaptations in addition to reading the book can help you visualize the characters, recognize the sheer grandeur of Gatsby's parties, and appreciate some of the larger themes of the book. Here are a few pros and cons to watching a Great Gatsby film.

Advantages of Watching the Great Gatsby Movies

Great performances. Although spread across the four different movies, each of the main characters in Gatsby gets at least one stellar performance, from Alan Ladd's Jay Gatsby to Sam Waterston's Nick Carraway to Elizabeth Debicki's Jordan. Watching the actors bring these characters to life can help you appreciate these characters' best lines, motivations, and outcomes. This can, in turn, help you write better essays about The Great Gatsby !

Stunning visuals. Gatsby is often praised for its straightforward, descriptive writing, but it can be nice to see a filmmaker's vision of, say, one of Jay Gatsby's extravagant parties rather than just imagining the orchestra, the drinks, and the partygoers, in your head. Not only does this help you appreciate the incredible decadence of the 1920s, and specifically the wealthy characters in the novel, it can also help you appreciate a visual detail you may have missed on your first read-through of the book.

Appreciation of the key lines. When you're reading a book to yourself, sometimes you may find yourself skimming over a line or passage that actually contains a really important piece of dialogue or characterization. Watching a movie adaptation, and hearing the lines the screenwriter chose to adapt and highlight, can help you catch and appreciate some of Gatsby 's most iconic phrases.

Reasons to Avoid Watching Any of These Movies

Time commitment.

You're going to have to budget at least an hour and a half, but likely more, if you want to watch a Gatsby movie. The runtimes for each of the movies is as follows:

• 1949 Version—91 Minutes
• 1974 Version—149 minutes
• 2000 Version—90 minutes
• 2013 Version—142 minutes

Especially with the incredibly busy schedules many students have these days, it could be hard to find the time to devote two and a half hours to watching a Gatsby movie, on top of the time it takes to read the book.

Also, keep in mind the book is relatively short—in the time it takes to watch one of the movies you could easily read at least half of the book.

Inaccuracies and Deviations From the Novel

Obviously, no movie can perfectly adapt a book, so everything from small details (like Daisy's hair color) to large plot events (like Tom blatantly telling George that Gatsby is the killer in the 2013 film) can be changed. This could be a problem if you mix up a scene that occurred only in one of the movies with something from the book when working on an assignment.

Mistaking the Director's Vision for Fitzgerald's

With any film, the director (along with the screenwriter, cinematographer, actors, and the rest of the crew) has a certain version or message that she brings to life. This can get a bit complicated in book adaptations, since a book—especially one as rich and layered as Gatsby—can contain a variety of messages and themes, but a director might choose to highlight just one or two.

As a brief example, the 1949 movie emphasizes Gatsby's criminal enterprises and can almost read like a morality tale. But the 2013 movie puts Gatsby and Daisy's failed love affair front and center.

The potential issue with this is that if you watch just one movie, and skip the book, you could totally miss a larger theme that the book clearly shows, like the false hope of the American Dream, contentious race relations in the 1920s, or the inability to truly recapture the past. In short, make sure you understand that while a movie has to focus on just one or two themes to be coherent, a book can present many more, and you definitely have to read Gatsby to understand the various themes it touches on.

With those pros and cons in mind, you can read on to learn more about each film adaptation to decide if you want to watch one (or all of them!).

After the summaries, we'll have some advice for writing about the movies, which is an increasingly common assignment in English/Language Arts classes!

The Great Gatsby (1949)

The first big adaptation of The Great G atsby came in 1949, just as the book was becoming more popular (but before it had really settled in as classic American novel ). So this movie, made by Paramount Pictures, is not very high budget and mainly relies on the star power of Alan Ladd as Gatsby to sell the film.

Perhaps the studio was right to lean on Ladd, because it turns out that Ladd's performance is the main aspect of this adaptation worth watching . He brings an incredibly layered performance of Gatsby in a performance that's, unfortunately, much better than the movie around him.

This film isn't as accurate to the book's plot as later adaptations—it focuses more on Gatsby's criminal enterprises, makes Jordan more significant, and ends with Nick and Jordan married. It's also lower budget than the later productions and has more of a film noir feel .

Plus, the other actors, particularly Betty Field as Daisy, aren't nearly as good as the lead, making the overall cast weaker than later productions. (Though Shelley Winters is fantastic as Myrtle.)

This film is also harder to find since it's older and not readily available on streaming services like Netflix. Your best bet would be checking out a few clips on YouTube, tracking down a DVD copy at a local library, or purchasing it on Amazon.

Basically, this film is worth finding if you want an excellent visualization of Gatsby himself but aren't as worried about the surrounding production or other characters and/or you like old movies and film noir. But for most students, one of the later adaptations will likely be a better choice.

The Great Gatsby (1974)

The 1974 version of The Great Gatsby (sometimes referred to as the "Robert Redford Great Gatsby ") was Hollywood's second attempt at adapting the novel, and by all accounts everyone involved was working a lot harder to do the book justice. It had a really large budget, brought in Francis Ford Coppola to adapt the screenplay, and cast big name actors like Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. The costumes and sets are stunning.

However, some critics noted the expensive scenery somewhat takes away from some of the authenticity of the book —for example, in the scene where Daisy and Gatsby reunite, the weather is sunny instead of rainy, presumably because the rain would have ruined the costumes.

Despite these blips, Coppola's screenplay is much more loyal to the book's plot than the 1949 version. However, the movie fails to channel the energy and passion of the novel, and so can fall flat or even become dull.

Redford received mixed reviews for his performance. He crafts two characters—the suave Jay Gatsby and the hardscrabble Jay Gatz—which some reviewers like and others find a bit heavy-handed. (It's much less subtle than Ladd's performance, in my opinion.)

Sam Waterston is great as Nick Carraway . He captures a lot of Nick's naïveté and optimism, but isn't given as much to do as more recent versions of the character. Mia Farrow's portrayal of Daisy has become our culture's image of this character, despite her blonde hair and waifish figure. (In the book, Daisy is described as having dark hair, and was meant to resemble Ginevra King and Zelda Sayre ).

All in all, this is a mostly faithful adaptation of the book with beautiful sets, costumes, and some good performances. Especially compared to the more raucous 2013 version, this is probably the closest movie we have to a page-to-screen adaptation of Gatsby . The downside is that it's somewhat low energy, and lacks a lot of the zip and wit of the novel .

This version is available on Netflix streaming, so if you have a Netflix account, it's really easy to watch.

The Great Gatsby (2000)

This movie is decently accurate, but because of its shorter run time, there are some cuts to the plot. It also has a few odd additions, like Daisy coming up with the name "Gatsby" instead of Gatsby himself.

Paul Rudd as Carraway and Mira Sorvino as Daisy were mostly considered good casting choices, but the Gatsby here (Toby Stephens) wasn't great—rather lifeless and unenthusiastic. I also didn't love Jordan, especially compared to Elizabeth Debicki's Jordan in the 2013 film. Heather Goldenhersh's Myrtle is an interesting take, as well—she's more meek and pitiable than other Myrtles (especially Shelley Winters and Isla Fisher), which is a bit strange but I think it makes for a more sympathetic character.

This film also has much lower production values since it was made for TV, so it doesn't have the escapist feel of either the Redford or Luhrmann films. (The party scenes are especially sparse.)

I would consider watching this if you want a film mostly accurate to the book that also moves along more quickly, since it has a shorter run time. It's also a good choice if you want to see some great characterizations of Nick and Daisy.

Teachers, this might be a good choice if you want to show a version of the film in class but don't have two and a half hours to spend on the 1974 or 2013 versions.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

This one is likely the Gatsby movie you are most familiar with. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, this Gatsby has the eye-popping visuals, dancing scenes, high energy and big production values his movies are known for. In other words, this 2013 adaptation has all of the energy and enthusiasm the previous two adaptations were lacking .

However, there are some pretty big plot diversions here. For example, the movie uses a completely different frame—Nick is a bitter, institutionalized alcoholic looking back at the summer he spent with Gatsby, rather than just a disenchanted former bond salesman like in the novel. Also, Tom Buchanan is much more overtly villainous, since we see him bluntly telling George that Gatsby was the killer and the man sleeping with Myrtle.

A lot of the imagery is also quite over the top. For example, the scene in Chapter 1 where Daisy and Jordan are introduced, lying in white dresses while white curtains blow around them, is faithfully but subtly done in the 1974 and 2000 films. But in the Luhrmann movie, the CGI curtains stretch all the way across the room, and we get 15 seconds of Daisy and Jordan giggling while Tobey Maguire's Nick looks on, bemused.

Still, despite the plot diversions and sometimes heavy-handed imagery, many praised Leo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan's turns as Gatsby and Daisy, respectively. Jordan, played by Elizabeth Debicki, is also fantastic—arguably the best on film so far . Instead of fading into the background of scenes, Debicki's Jordan is energetic and engaged, enlivening all of the scenes she's in.

The 2013 movie is good to watch if you want an extra high-powered version of the Jazz Age extravagance and are curious about a more artistic adaptation of the novel.

Comparing the Great Gatsby Movies to the Novel

One increasingly popular assignment on The Great Gatsby is to compare the book with one of the movie adaptations. This can be a fun assignment to work on, since you get to write about both the book and a movie version of Gatsby . But some students struggle with it, since it can be tricky to incorporate an analysis of both the book and a movie into your paper.

Here are some pro tips for constructing this kind of essay.

Have an overall argument or point you're trying to prove, and make it manageable! Don't try to compare the entire movie to the entire book. Instead, zoom in on a particular aspect, like comparing Daisy Buchanan in the book to Daisy in the movie, or look at just a few of the symbols. For example, if you're asked to write about how symbols are adapted in the movie, don't go through every symbol you can think of. Instead, you could focus on your paper on the green light or the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg , and really look at your chosen symbol in detail.

Make sure to use specific lines, scenes, or shots to back up your argument. In your English classes, you've probably learned about using evidence from the book as evidence for your essays. It turns out, you can do the same with movies! Even better, you have a wider variety of evidence to choose from.

You can talk about a specific shot of the film, and how it's composed (basically where the actors and objects are arranged in the shot). You can also talk about lines from the script, or the order of scenes. Just make sure to point to specific, concrete evidence! (Don't say: Carey Mulligan's Daisy is flighty. Do say: Carey Mulligan's performance in the flashback scene demonstrates more raw, intense emotion than apparent in the book, revealing Baz Luhrmann's tendency to overdraw emotion.)

Don't just make a list of plot differences between the book and the movie. Just listing the plot differences won't allow you to do any deep analysis of the director's vision for their film and how it's different from the novel.

Movie Essay Example

As a brief example, let's look at how one of Gatsby's most famous symbols, the green light at the end of the Buchanans' dock , is shown in two of the movies and what it shows about the directors' visions.

In the 1974 film, the green light is very simply rendered—it's quite literally a small green light at the end of Tom and Daisy's dock:

Director Jack Clayton doesn't linger on it, and at the end of the film you just get a small glimpse of it before the final fade to black. Its significance, I would argue, is even more underplayed than in the novel. The treatment of the green light echoes how Clayton goes for a subtle, even elegant, treatment of the novel, focusing on the interactions between the characters rather than the symbolism.

But in the 2013 film, the green light shows up often, and Luhrmann uses CGI and sound effects to underscore its significance (check out how it's used in the last scene ). Luhrmann's overwrought rendering of the green light speaks to how he strongly stresses the novel's most famous visuals , in an effort to bring the image of the novel to light. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of some of the character relationships and fidelity to the book's plot.

This is just the beginning of what could be a longer analysis of the symbols in the movies, but you can see how even zooming in on just one symbol can give you quite a bit to talk about.

Other Notable Films

If you're really getting into all things F. Scott Fitzgerald, you might also consider watching these three films for fun:

• G , which came out in 2002 and is a loose adaptation of Gatsby . In the film, Gatsby is Summer G, a hip-hop mogul trying to win back the love of his life, Sky. The film opened to generally poor reviews, but you can't deny it's a really creative take on Gatsby, and it has attracted a small but loyal following online.
• Midnight in Paris briefly shows Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald during their time in Paris, as portrayed by Tom Hiddleston and Allison Pill. This is a fun, if fictional, glimpse into F. Scott's life as he was writing Gatsby .
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button , a recent film starring Brad Pitt, is based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story.

What's Next?

Looking to bring Gatsby into your life via outfits, candles, or other accoutrements? Check out our list of 15 must-have Great Gatsby accessories for ideas .

Read through our biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald to learn more about where and how The Great Gatsby was written.

Dive into the novel's beginning with our guides to Gatsby 's title , its opening pages and epigraph , and the first chapter . Or, start with a summary of The Great Gatsby , along with links to all our great articles analyzing this novel!

Need a hand with analyzing other works of literature? Check out our analyses of The Crucible , The Cask of Amontillado , and " Do not go gentle into that good night ."

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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How Faithful Is The Great Gatsby ?

Ever since Baz Luhrmann announced that he was adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby­ —and especially after he revealed that he’d be doing it in 3-D—much digital ink has been spilled about the hideous sacrilege that was sure to follow. Nevermind that Luhrmann’s previous adaptation, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet , was quite true to both the language and the spirit of that legendary play; Gatsby , as David Denby puts it in The New Yorker this week, is “ too intricate, too subtle, too tender for the movies ,” and especially for such an unsubtle filmmaker as Luhrmann.

So the argument goes, anyway. In fact, Fitzgerald’s novel, while great, is not, for the most part, terribly subtle. And though it has moments of real tenderness, it also has melodrama, murder, adultery, and, of course, wild parties. In any case, we can put aside, for the moment, the larger question of whether Luhrmann captured the spirit of Gatsby , which is very much open for debate . There’s a simpler question to address first: How faithful was the filmmaker to the letter of Fitzgerald’s book?

Below is a breakdown of the ways in which the new film departs from the classic novel.

The Frame Story Luhrmann’s chief departure from the novel arrives right at the beginning, with a frame story in which the narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), some time after that summer spent with Gatsby & co., has checked into a sanitarium, diagnosed by a doctor of some sort as “morbidly alcoholic.” Fitzgerald’s Nick does refer to Gatsby as “the man who gives his name to this book ” (emphasis mine), so the idea that The Great Gatsby is a text written by Nick is not entirely original with Luhrmann—though the filmmaker takes this much further than Fitzgerald, showing Nick writing by hand, then typing, and finally compiling his finished manuscript. He even titles it, first just  Gatsby , then adding, by hand, “The Great,” in a concluding flourish. ( Fitzgerald himself went through many more potential titles .) As for that morbid alcoholism, Nick claims in the novel that he’s “been drunk just twice in my life,” but the movie slyly implies that he’s in denial, by showing him cross out “once” for “twice,” and then, in the frame story, suggesting that it was far more than that, really.

Jordan and Nick The plot of the film is pretty much entirely faithful to the novel, but Luhrmann and his co-screenwriter Craig Pearce do cut out one of the side stories: the affair between Nick and Jordan Baker, the friend of Daisy’s from Louisville who is a well-known golfer. Daisy promises to set them up, to push them “accidentally in linen closets and … out to sea in a boat,” a line the screenplay keeps—but then, in the film, the matter is dropped. Luhrmann’s Nick says he found Jordan “frightening” at first, a word Carraway doesn’t apply to her in the novel—and later at Gatsby’s we see Jordan whisked away from Nick by a male companion, which doesn’t happen in the book. In the novel, they become a couple and break up near the end of the summer.

The Apartment Party The film, like the novel, is a series of set pieces, including an impromptu party that Tom throws in a Manhattan apartment he keeps for his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, wife of a Queens mechanic. Nick accompanies them, and the film shows Nick sitting quietly in the apartment’s living room while the adulterous couple have loud sex in the bedroom. Fitzgerald doesn’t spell out anything so explicit—but something like that is implied: Tom and Myrtle disappear and reappear before the other guests arrive; Nick reads a book and waits. Luhrmann also shows Myrtle’s sister Catherine giving Nick a pill that she says she got from a doctor in Queens; that’s not in the novel at all. Luhrmann’s Nick wakes up at home, half-dressed, unsure how he got there, while Fitzgerald’s narrator comes to in an apartment downstairs from Tom and Myrtle’s place, owned by one of their friends (and party-guests); he then goes to Penn Station to take the 4 o’clock train home.

Lunch With Wolfsheim In the book, Gatsby takes Nick to lunch at a “well-fanned 42 nd Street cellar,” where he introduces his new friend to Meyer Wolfsheim, a Jewish gangster. In the movie, Gatsby and Nick go to a barber shop with a hidden entrance to a speakeasy, and once inside they see not only Wolfsheim but also the police commissioner—who, in the book as in the film, Gatsby was “able to do … a favor once.” They also see there (if I understood things correctly) Nick’s boss, whom I believe Luhrmann has turned into Tom’s friend Walter Chase. (In the novel, those are two different people, neither of whom we ever actually meet.) The speakeasy features entertainment from a bevy of Josephine Baker-like dancers, who are not mentioned in the book.

Race At least one reviewer—David Denby again—has protested Luhmann’s decision to cast an Indian actor, Amitabh Bachchan, as Wolfsheim, a character based on notorious Jewish gangster Arnold Rothstein. But faithfulness in this case probably would have meant anti-Semitism, since it is very hard to defend Fitzgerald’s characterization of the “small, flat-nosed Jew” with a “large head” and “two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril.” Casting Bachchan preserves the character’s otherness while complicating the rather gruesome stereotype Fitzgerald employed. Luhrmann appears to have given some thought to this, given that he faithfully keeps key passages from the novel about race: Tom’s trumpeting of a racist book called Rise of the Colored Empires (which had a real-world inspiration ), Nick’s glimpse of apparently wealthy black men and women being driven into Manhattan by a white chauffeur, and Tom’s later diatribe about “intermarriage between black and white.”

The Finnish Woman and Ella Kaye Did you know that Nick Carraway had a maid? This is easy to forget, since Nick seems generally financially a bit strapped, certainly in comparison to his rich neighbors. But in the novel he employs “a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.” She makes a few appearances in the book but is understandably cut from the movie. So is Ella Kaye, the seemingly conniving woman who manages to snag the inheritance of Dan Cody, the rich, drunken yachtsman who first prompts Gatsby on his road to wealth and artifice. In the movie, Cody’s wealth goes to his family.

Gatsby’s Death and Funeral Near the end of the book, Gatsby is murdered by George Wilson, the mechanic husband of Tom’s mistress, who has gotten it into his head that Gatsby killed her—and that, what’s more, he might have been the one she was sleeping with on the side. Fitzgerald doesn’t depict the murder: The book says that Gatsby grabbed a “pneumatic mattress” (i.e., a floater ) and headed to his pool, then Gatsby’s chauffeur hears gun shots. Luhrmann ditches the pneumatic mattress and adds his own dramatic flourish. In both book and movie, Gatsby is waiting for a phone call from Daisy, but in the film, Nick calls, and Gatsby gets out of the pool when he hears the phone ring. He’s then shot, and he dies believing that Daisy was going to ditch Tom and go way with him. None of that happens in the book.

Gatsby is, in both versions, lonely in death, but the film is even crueler to him in this regard, dropping the last-minute appearance of his father and the unexpected arrival at the funeral of a man who Nick previously met in Gatsby’s study. This is the same man who famously points out that Gatsby has real books, but hasn’t cut the pages. We meet him in the movie in that study, but he makes no mention of the books, and his subsequent appearance is dropped entirely.

Read more in Slate about The Great Gatsby .

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The Great Gatsby: 9 Big Differences Between The Book And Movie

Here's a rundown of the changes.

Putting together a film based on a highly acclaimed literary work full of phrasings and lines of dialogue that have forever been burned into readers' minds is largely a thankless task. Creating a film that maintains the heart and soul of such a literary work and even many of its most graceful lines is nearly impossible to accomplish, and in that aspect, director Baz Luhrmann has plenty of troubles with The Great Gatsby . F. Scott Fitzgerald's descriptive sentences are almost as important as his dialogue and tossing some of the finest lines from the book into ashy script on the screen isn't the best way to make the most of those moments. Nor is taking creative license in certain big moments in order to speed up the storytelling process.

In other ways, Luhrmann owns his portrayal of The Great Gatsby , keeping the energy and the often frenetic pace of the twenties by speeding forward into nights of partying and langouring through days of idle play. Like the director's other works---especially Moulin Rouge -- The Great Gatsby is noticeably, unmistakably Luhrmann's and whether or not you believe in his vision is largely dependent on your tolerance of the man's idea of spectacle. It would be nearly impossible to outdo Mr. Fitzgerald, and so Luhrmann tries to visually gives us as different a world as possible while still maintaining the quality of the venerable writer's pages. It's not the movie Fitzgerald would have written, but he was never all that good at creating screenplays, anyway.

Following are the nine biggest changes I noticed in my screening of The Great Gatsby . Feel free to remark on any changes you feel may have been more noticeable. There are many spoilers in The Great Gatsby book to movie comparison. Do not delve in if you want the film to be a surprise .

To give a frame to Nick Carraway's narration, Luhrmann introduces us to a broken Nick, who is working with a doctor to recover his health after troubles with alcohol. This seems a little distasteful, since Carraway comes across as a mostly careful and considerate individual. Asking us to see him out of sorts after Gatsby's death is more than a bit of a stretch, especially as Luhrmann also tasks the character with writing The Great Gatsby .

We learn Jordan Baker is an athlete nearly immediately. Though this in itself doesn't mean much, her entire storyline is sped up and her unlikely romance with Nick is cut out for the sake of time. In the book, the two only ever seem to have a casual affection for each another, especially as Jordan is shown to be dishonest, but in the film, she's a blank canvass we never get to know all that much about. This actually makes her character quite a bit more mysterious and likable, though.

Not only is Jordan a tepid version of her novel character, Daisy also lacks a certain spark and an underlying pettiness that propels her character forward in the book. Instead of offering a voice ringing like money, she offers a weak will and a damsel-in-distress persona that doesn't suit the character, or actress Carey Mulligan , either. In the book, she's careless. Here, she's more often thoughtless.

We get an early hint that Gatsby is wistful and waiting for someone before Carraway even goes to New York and gets roaring drunk. He sees his neighbor out on the dock late in the evening, staring across the harbor. It's easy for audience members who have read the book to decipher what he is thinking, but the small moment certainly gives fans an extra foreshadowing of the big reveal in the book.

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While Fitzgerald's book always feels very much a product of a particular period in time, Luhrmann's work always seems like one grand costume party, irrevocably modern and full of rap music. He pairs this with quiet moments between our main characters that give us a breather and result in a stylistic film that manages to feel like Fitzgerald's book and nothing like it at all.

When Nick luncheons with Gatsby and Mr. Wolfsheim, Luhrmann takes us through a secret door in a barbershop and into a speakeasy full of dancing women and at least slightly corrupt men. To prove a point about corruption, Luhrmann even places the police commissioner on the premise. It's a little heavy-handed, but who doesn't want to see a speakeasy in a movie set during prohibition?

When Gatsby is verbally attacked by Tom in New York, much of the dialogue is the same. However, when Gatsby begins to lose control, begins to realize that Daisy is present in the room but may be out of his grasp, his "face that could kill a man" morphs into a childish freak out where Gatsby even screams, "Shut up." The childish antic is a nice callback to the time Carraway chides him for behaving childishly before he meets Daisy for tea.

Tom Buchanan becomes a super villain by the end of the film, painting a murderous image into Wilson's head and convincing him to do the bad deed. Making Tom into an overt bad guy is convenient to the plot, but changing Tom from an unlikable guy into a ruthless villain seems lazy and too cheap of a behavior for the character.

In the end, when Gatsby goes swimming, waiting for Daisy to call, he is shot and taken away from his dream---of success, of getting the girl---while the phone rings in the background. Though we later perceive it is Carraway, for a moment, we get to see Gatsby's great hope swell once more, even as his life dims, and we get to wonder whether or not Daisy is on the line, and what she would say if she was.

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways. 

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The Great Gatsby (2013 Film)

By baz luhrmann, the great gatsby (2013 film) themes, the deterioration of the american dream.

Set in 1920s America, Fitzgerald's novel portrayed the cynicism that surrounded many people's philosophies following WWI. Part of this cynicism had to do with the precarious position of the "American Dream." Despite the fact that the end of the war resulted in increased national wealth and heightened materialism, the American Dream, as a concept, became more and more warped during this period, in large part due to the immense wealth disparities that were so prevalent. While this dream was originally about the pursuit of happiness and individualism, the America shown in the novel, and indeed depicted in Luhrmann's film, is one in which a very few people get ahead, and others struggle to keep up. In showing the almost-universal preoccupation with materialism and instant gratification, the film shows the ways that the American Dream, in the 1920s, was governed by decadent appetites, not by the pursuit of personal freedom.

Furthermore, the futility of the American Dream is further represented in Gatsby's struggle to be with Daisy and to become a man of influence. He tells Tom that he is just as respectable as him, alleging, "Now I've just as much as you. That means we're equal." In this moment, Gatsby outlines the promise of the "American Dream" and American capitalism, by suggesting that because he has as much money as Tom, the two men are equals. Tom Buchanan , a man of "noble" birth—which, in the American context, simply means being born into money rather than having earned it—quickly laughs off Gatsby's naivety, and assures Gatsby that their difference lies in their respective "blood." To an old-money, privileged man like Buchanan, the American Dream is only available to those with the proper breeding and inheritance. While Gatsby had dreamed that he could ascend into the upper classes if he had enough money, this is simply not the case. Thus, the film shows the fragility of the American Dream.

Material Wealth and Ethics

A major theme throughout the film of The Great Gatsby is how being successful—in this case, being in the upper class—allows people to detach from consequences and behave in unethical ways. Daisy and Tom are the main examples of this, as they blatantly show no regard for anyone but themselves. As Nick states at the end of the film, "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and people, and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness." Money acts as a shield against accountability, allowing characters to act as recklessly and inhumanely as they desire. Daisy and Tom are so used to disregarding the lives of others that, following Myrtle's and Gatsby's deaths, they simply move on with their lives, run away from the problem, and don't give it a second thought. They remove themselves from the situation both physically and mentally, because their money gives them the privilege to do so.

The past is a major theme in The Great Gatsby . Gatsby is under the impression that his relationship with Daisy can return to the way it was before they were separated. Even when he sees that Daisy has married someone else and had a child, he is determined to return to the past. Even when Nick assures him that he cannot repeat the past, Gatsby insists that he can. Gatsby's belief that he can conjure up the past is one of his tragic flaws. While Gatsby romanticizes and idealizes the past, everyone around him is far more realistic. Gatsby believes so firmly that Daisy feels the same way she felt about him before the war that he asks her to tell Tom she never loved him. Daisy is unable to, because that would mean throwing away the life she built in Gatsby's absence. This inability to accept that Daisy has moved on leads to his death.

Imagination

The character trait of Gatsby's that allows him to so fully immerse himself in the past and in the belief that it is repeatable is his vivid imagination. Gatsby's mind is filled with heightened machinations, delusions of grandeur, and charming fictions. When Daisy dances with Gatsby at his party, she looks around her at the splendor of the party and asks, "Was all of this made entirely from your own imagination?" Daisy is in love with Gatsby in large part because of his more over-the-top qualities, his desire to impress her, to give her everything. It is Gatsby's imagination which endows him with such hope that he will be able to live the life with Daisy that he always wanted. His imagination makes him both charming and impractical, special but delusional. Not only does Gatsby convince others that he comes from a different background, but it seems that his imagination allows him to believe this narrative himself.

A central driving force in the film is the romance between Daisy and Gatsby. Their love is depicted as passionate, impractical, and uninhibited. The love story between them is depicted as pure and authentic, in contrast with the obligational, flawed, and untrusting marital relationship between Daisy and Tom. While Daisy also holds love for Tom, the film portrays her love with Gatsby as far more fulfilling. Gatsby eventually asks for "too much," when he asks Daisy to tell Tom that she never loved him, which ends up being more than she can give to him, but their love is the central force driving the conflict of the film.

Leisure and Parties

When the film starts, Nick narrates a little about the historical context of the film, and shares that the 1920s were a time of great wealth, materialism, and heightened frivolity (in spite of the nationwide prohibition of alcohol). The setting and time period in which the film takes place sets the stage for some epic parties. The theme of party-going is perfectly suited to director Baz Luhrmann and art director Catherine Martin's strengths. Throughout the film, we see parties pushed to their limits. In Myrtle's apartment, champagne sprays throughout the whole raucous party, people dance around in various states of undress, and as Nick narrates, "That night, in the hidden flat that Tom kept for Myrtle, we were buoyed by a sort of chemical madness, a willingness of the heart that burst thunderously upon us all." This "willingness," the desire to push towards festive limits pervades much of the beginning of the film. Gatsby's parties are a manic spectacle, as we see the entire mansion packed to the gills with people. People dance and jump in the pool, guests mill throughout the gigantic mansion, and take in flamboyant performances. The lavishness of these parties represents the inordinate wealth that Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby possess, as well as the general spirit of debauchery and recklessness of the 1920s.

Writing and Observation

From the start, Nick Carraway is positioned as an observer. When he sees Tom Buchanan, Tom thinks of him as a writer, calling him "Shakespeare" and asking him how his novel is going. Nick, who has taken a job on Wall Street , resists the label of writer, yet maintains a writerly perspective throughout the film. At the party in Myrtle's apartment, he talks about having the experience of feeling at once "within and without," and we see him looking at a projection of himself out on the street. His feeling of being both a part of and apart from the events in his life, positions him as a writerly, observant presence in the film. Furthermore, in the scenes in the sanatarium, Nick's doctor urges him to write down what has happened. Writing becomes the only way for Nick to heal from the events of the past. His condition improves as he writes the story of Gatsby, and by the end of the film he has written a whole manuscript.

The Great Gatsby (2013 Film) Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Great Gatsby (2013 Film) is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

The confrontation between Gatsby, Tom and Dailey at the hotel shows Daisy's essential weakness. What is it?

Daisy is superficial and really only out for herself to maintain the lifestyle that she has become accustomed to.

As the film continues, Nick and the audience learn more about Jay Gatsby's background. How does his history help viewers understand the man we see in the mansion on West Egg?

Gatsby is supposed to be an enigma yet the narrative slowly gives up clues to the audience that Gatsby perhaps is not so complicated. By the end of the book/film we can see that Gatsby is an intelligent bootlegger with a talent for dealing with...

Earlier than Gatsby, the audience meets Tom Buchanan and his wife Daisy. What does the director want viewers to see about Tom?

I think that Baz Luhrmann, the director, wants audiences to experience Tom's incredible wealth as well as his domineering control and manipulations over all aspects of his life. Tom is essentially a filthy rich belligerent blowhard who likes the...

Study Guide for The Great Gatsby (2013 Film)

The Great Gatsby (2013 Film) study guide contains a biography of director Baz Luhrmann, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Great Gatsby (2013 Film)
• The Great Gatsby (2013 Film) Summary
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for The Great Gatsby (2013 Film)

The Great Gatsby (2013 Film) essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Great Gatsby (2013 Film), directed by Baz Luhrmann.

• Using Film to Expand Upon The Great Gatsby
• Internal & External Lives of Characters in The Great Gatsby vs. The Valley of Ashes & East Egg
• Influence of contextual factors across American Literature

Wikipedia Entries for The Great Gatsby (2013 Film)

• Introduction

The Great Gatsby Movie vs Book Essay

The Great Gatsby is a classic 1925 novel by the American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald. The novel is a critically acclaimed representation of the American Dream, the hopelessness of social constructs, and the struggle to achieve prosperity. Fitzgerald explores the impossibility of recapturing the past and how it substantially impacts the future. The narrator of the story is Nick Carraway, a young World War I veteran from Minnesota who comes to New York in search of a better future as he observes other characters whose lives contrast with his own. The novel was adapted into a movie by Baz Luhrman as the director. The movie was officially released in 2013, featuring various Hollywood stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby and Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway. The director did an incredible job of bringing the classical storyline to life with an astonishing display of 3D technology. Nonetheless, putting together a movie based on a hugely acclaimed literary work with graceful lines, phrases and dialogues were quite challenging. Although, The Great Gatsby Movie and book portrayed similarities in coverage of class difference and the hollowness of the American Dream, the two adaptations varied regarding characters and action sequences.

Differences

The character of Nick Carraway is altered in the movie to give readers a deeper insight into the characters’ experiences and predicament in a shorter version. To provide a suitable setting for Nick Caraway’s narration, the director introduces him as a broken figure working with a doctor to recover from his alcohol troubles (Anushirvani & Alinezhadi, 2016). This demeanor varies significantly from the character in the book, which is most careful and considerate. Although this characterization seems distasteful, it gives Nick’s narration a suitable framework. In the novel, Nick claims, “I have been drunk just twice in my life,” which is different from the movie, which portrays him as a struggling alcoholic in denial (Fitzgerald, 1925). Perdikaki (2018) notes that Luhrmann presents the idea that Nick writes The Great Gatsby and even shows him writing the text by hand, typing, and compiling the complete manuscript. However, although the idea that Nick writes the book comes from the novel, Fitzgerald does not dive further into the process. In the movie, Nick first writes the title as just Gatsby and eventually adds the phrase ‘the Great” by hand.

Similarly, the character of the maid in the book is cut off from the scenes in the movie. In the movie, Nick seems financially distraught compared to his wealthy neighbors. Therefore, it is pretty easy to assume that Nick would not afford the luxury of a domestic worker. However, in the book, he refers to employing a Finnish woman who helped him with most of his household work. Nick narrates that he hired a “Finnish woman who made (his) bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.” (Fitzgerald, 1925). The maid makes several appearances in the book but is completely cut off from the film. Successively, in the novel, Ella Kaye, a scheming woman, manages to steal the inheritance of Dan Cody, a wealthy and drunkard yacht owner.

Conversely, in the movie, Cody’s wealth is inherited by his family (Perdikaki, 2018). Likewise, the character of Jordan in the film is more mysterious and likable than in the book. Jordan Baker’s storyline is sped up in the movie because of time. Viewers learn about her abilities as an athlete almost in the opening scenes of the movies. However, Baker’s unlikely romance with Nick is cut off from the film, although the book only shows that they have a casual affection for each other.

Similarities

Although it is pretty impossible to put together an entire novel’s sequences into a two-hour movie, there are apparent similarities between the Great Gatsby movie and the book. In both movie and the book, there is rich figurative speech that emphasizes the contrast in lifestyles and outlooks on life between the different characters. The noble and romantic dream is hugely contrasted by the moral corruption presented in the characters of Tom ad Daisy. According to Anushirvani & Alinezhadi (2016), both the writer and director portray a deep contrast between the lifestyles of the West and East. Nick Carraway finds it challenging to adapt to the East because he is from the West.

On the contrary, Tom and Daisy portray the materialistic and fashionable lifestyle representing the East. Through Nick’s observations and experiences, the perception that history could be reversed recurs in the novel and movie. Nick narrates, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that no matter – tomorrow we will run faster.” (Luhrmann, 2013). Gatsby invites Daisy and Nick to his big house in both the book and the movie. He states, “I want you to come over to my house.” (Fitzgerald, 1925). Gatsby’s mansion represents his massive wealth and the class difference between the other characters.

In general, The Great Gatsby movie and the book share many similarities and differences that contribute to the compelling storyline, theme, and plot. Although, at the same time, most characters maintain much of their personalities from the book, the movie altered several scenes and interactions, possibly due to time and visual impressions of various settings. Nonetheless, the Great Gatsby remains a classic story about the varied perception of attaining the American Dream that is presented remarkably in both the book and the movie.

• Anushirvani, A., & Alinezhadi, E. (2016). An analytical study of the 2013 cinematic adaptation of The great gatsby.  International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences ,  68 , 73-85.
• Fitzgerald, F. (1925).  The Great Gatsby  (1st ed.). Charles Scribner’s Sons.
• Luhrmann, B. (2013).  The Great Gatsby  [Film]. Hollywood; Village Roadshow Pictures A&E.
• Perdikaki, K. (2018). Film adaptation as the interface between creative translation and cultural transformation: The case of Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.  JoSTrans: The Journal of Specialized Translation , (29).
• A Rose for Emily
• Animal Farm
• Death of a Salesman
• Fahrenheit 451
• Flowers for Algernon
• George Orwell's 1984
• Gothic Literature

The Great Gatsby

Robert Redford as Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby is a superficially beautiful hunk of a movie with nothing much in common with the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. I wonder what Fitzgerald, whose prose was so graceful, so elegantly controlled, would have made of it: of the willingness to spend so much time and energy on exterior effect while never penetrating to the souls of the characters. It would take about the same time to read Fitzgerald’s novel as to view this movie — and that’s what I’d recommend.

The movie is “faithful” to the novel with a vengeance — to what happens in the novel, that is, and not to the feel, mood, and spirit of it. Yet I’ve never thought the events in The Great Gatsby were that important to the novel’s success; Fitzgerald, who came out of St. Paul to personify the romance of an age, was writing in a way about himself when he created Gatsby. The mundane Midwestern origins had been replaced by a new persona, by a flash and charisma that sometimes only concealed the despair underneath. For Fitzgerald, there was always something unattainable; and for Gatsby, it was Daisy Buchanan, the lost love of his youth, forever symbolized by that winking green beacon at the end of her dock.

The beacon and the other Fitzgerald symbols are in this movie version, but they communicate about as much as the great stone heads on Easter Island. They’re memorials to a novel in which they had meaning. The art director and set decorator seem to have ripped whole pages out of Fitzgerald and gone to work to improve on his descriptions. Daisy and her husband, the ruthless millionaire Tom Buchanan, live almost drowning in whites, yellows, and ennui. Tom’s mistress Myrtle and her husband, the shabby filling station owner George, live in a wasteland of ashes in Fitzgerald’s novel; in the movie, they seem to have landed on the moon.

All of this unfeeling physical excess might have been overcome by performances. But the director, Jack Clayton , having assembled a promising cast, fails to exploit them very well. When the casting of Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby was announced, I objected because he didn’t fit my notion of Gatsby: He was too substantial, too assured, even too handsome. I saw him as Tom Buchanan, and somebody else as Gatsby ( Jack Nicholson , maybe, or Bruce Dern — who plays Tom).

Having seen the movie, I think maybe I was wrong: Redford could have played Gatsby. I’m not even sure it’s his fault he doesn’t. The first time Clayton shows us Gatsby, it’s a low-angle shot of a massive figure seen against the night sky and framed by marble: This isn’t the romantic Gatsby on his doomed quest, it’s Charles Foster Kane. A scene where Gatsby reaches out as if to snatch the green beacon in his hand is true to the book, but the movie’s literal showing of it looks silly.

These hints of things to come lead up to two essential scenes in which Clayton fails to give us a Gatsby we care about. The first is the initial meeting between Gatsby and Nick (Gatsby wants Nick, his neighbor and Daisy’s cousin, to invite her to tea so they can meet again). Redford is so inarticulate and formal in this scene with Nick that we laugh; it’s the first time we hear him talk, and he’s so mannered that the acting upstages the content of the scene. Doesn’t that have to be Clayton’s fault?

We know Redford has range enough to have played the scene in several better ways. And then the actual reunion between Gatsby and Daisy — the moment on which the rest of the movie is going to depend — gives us Gatsby’s toothpaste grin and Daisy’s stunned reaction and holds both for so long that any tension reduces itself to the ridiculous. It doesn’t even feel as if Gatsby’s happy to see Daisy — more that he assumes she’s overjoyed to see him.

The message of the novel, if I read it correctly, is that Gatsby, despite his dealings with gamblers and bootleggers, is a romantic, naive, and heroic product of the Midwest — and that his idealism is doomed in any confrontation with the reckless wealth of the Buchanans. This doesn’t come through in the movie. When Nick, at his last meeting with Gatsby, tells him how much he admires him (“You’re worth the whole crowd of them”), we frankly don’t know why unless we’ve read the book.

Oh, we’re told, to be sure: The sound track contains narration by Nick that is based pretty closely on his narration in the novel. But we don’t feel. We’ve been distanced by the movie’s overproduction. Even the actors seem somewhat cowed by the occasion; an exception is Bruce Dern, who just goes ahead and gives us a convincing Tom Buchanan. We don’t have to be told the ways in which Tom is indifferent to human feeling, because we can sense them.

But we can’t penetrate the mystery of Gatsby. Nor, to be honest, can we quite understand what’s so special about Daisy Buchanan. Not as she’s played by Mia Farrow , all squeaks and narcissism and empty sophistication. In the novel, Gatsby never understands that he is too good for Daisy. In the movie, we never understand why he thought she was good enough for him. And that’s what’s missing.

That, and one other small item: How could a screenplay that plundered Fitzgerald’s novel so literally, that quoted so much of the narration and dialogue, have ended with a rinky-dink version of “Ain’t We Got Fun” instead of the most famous last sentence of any novel of the century? Maybe because the movie doesn’t ever come close to understanding it: “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Bruce Dern as Tom Buchanan
• Scott Wilson as George Wilson
• Howard da Silva as Meyer Wolfsheim
• Karen Black as Myrtle Wilson
• Edward Herrmann as Klipspringer
• Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway
• Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan
• Lois Chiles as Jordan Baker
• Robert Redford as Gatsby
• Robert Blossom as Mr. Gatz

Produced by

• David Merrick

Screenplay by

• Francis Ford Coppola

Directed by

• Jack Clayton

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