They explained things. Shorn of the mystery, with Gatsby being a gangster dramatized, it turns into a melodrama, and a potboiler at that.
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"Why do people always laugh in the wrong places?"
--Arnold Gingrich
I agree. This adaptation shuns the elemnts that made the novel so unique and intriguing and uses it merely as a skeleton for a run-of-the-mill 40's melodrama. This movie isn't as obsucre as it is for nothing.
I'm here, Mr. Man, I cannot tell no lie and I'll be right here till the day I die
I can't believe that anyone thought that it would be a good idea to strip away all of the excitement, humor, dangerous and crazy fun of the Jazz Age and turn it into a late 1940s melodrama. What a missed opportunity!
All of the leads were rather weak, miscast and not much like the people I pictured from the story, with the exception of Shelly Winters as Myrtle (who gave a great performance but whose part was woefully chopped short anyway.) Why there was so much tampering with key story points I can't understand. Made up scenes and changed characters really made the story, as told in this filmed version, a total mess!
This film could well have faded into oblivion without being missed at all.
It doe make it obvious in showing Gatsby as a gangster type which the other versions just allude to.
Its that man again!!
I think that it was a mistake to explicitly lay out for us where Gatsby had come from, what he did, etc. Part of the allure of this story is that Gatsby is such an enigma.
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