November 5th 2013. Pick Of The Day.
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A post-Halloween quietude returns to the city, and choices are slim on the rep film circuit. Some interesting selections on hand still though, as continuing/concluding series include BAM's mini-trib Dern + Black, the Film Society's imaginatively monickered Scary Movies 7, and Anthology Film Archive's still very much creeping y crawling Golden Age of Spanish Horror Cinema. The rundown be thus;
Film Forum
NOSFERATU (1979) Dir; Werner Herzog
BAM Cinematek
THE GREAT GATSBY (1974) Dir; Jack Clayton
Film Society of Lincoln Center
THE NANNY (1965) Dir; Seth Holt
Anthology Film Archives
VENUS IN FURS (1969) Dir; Jess Franco
NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS (1975) Dir; Amando de Ossorio
Today's Pick? I'm gonna go with the mostly unsuccessful 70's adap of what is arguably considered, alongside HUCK FINN and ON THE ROAD, to be the Great American Novel; F. Scott Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY, first brought to the silent screen in a version starring Warner Baxter and most recently given a Real 3D spitshine by the wildly ostentatious filmmaker Baz Lurhman. Back in the wild New Hollywood era Robert Evans, then head of production at Paramount Pictures, was enjoying an uncanny hit streak that began with BAREFOOT IN THE PARK and had stretched all the way up to LOVE STORY when he secured the rights to Fitzgerald's classic novel. Originally intended as a vehicle for his then-wife Ali McGraw and box office powerhouse Steve McQueen in the title role, he understandably eschewed this casting once they became off-screen lovers and McGraw asked for a divorce. As goes the famous maxim, anyone in Hollywood would do biz with Hitler if there was a buck in it, but the guy who's shtupping your wife, not so much.
Resolute in his intentions to bring the definitive film adap of Fitzie's gem to the big screen, Evans enlisted friend/adversary Francis Ford Coppola, co-winner of 1971's screenwriting Oscar for PATTON, who was then concocting a little something called THE GODFATHER, to bang out a proper screenplay after Truman Capote's efforts proved unsatisfactory. Evans greenlit Coppola's script, and then uncharacteristically entrusted the director's chair to a pioneer of the Brit Angry Young Man cinema movement of the prior decade, one Jack Clayton. Eventually Robert Redford and Mia Farrow came on board as Jay and Daisy, and the production got underway, but the resulting work (which Coppola has disowned) was widely criticized for its focus on class demonization as opposed to Fitzgerald's examination of the wholly American idea of identity reinvention and its ultimate lack of fulfilment.
Flat. Long. Boring. Those are the terms with which Clayton's adap were and are met. And yet as much as I agree with the film's critics there are pleasures to be had. Redford's take on Gatsby may well have been definitive had the film that framed him been a better one. Doug Slocombe's DP work is appropriately lush and diffuse, as any ghost story should be, and snagged him a BAFTA award. And the actors whose names grace the short fest this version screens as part of, Bruce Dern and Karen Black, essaying the roles of Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, were and are simply incapable of being uninteresting on camera. To sum up, it ain't perfect by a long shot, but this haunted house tale tops any of the other horror flicks unspooling today. One day F. Scott may look down on a perfect screen adap of his most famous literary work. Until then...
For more info on these and all NYC's classic screenings in November '13 click on the interactive calendar on the upper right hand side of the page. And be sure to follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Back tomorrow with more of the primo vino, til then look outta for yooself and be good to the next guy an'na gal. I'm-a no why I turn Italian! Cent'anni!
-Giuseppe Walsh
