James Gatz grasps the American Dream through racketeering, bootlegging, gambling and other vices, reinventing himself as a blue-blooded old sport, yet his fatal mistake is in transcending his caste and betraying the one person who matters most: himself. Elliott Nugent’s humdrum direction and pacing transforms the great American novel into a typical melodrama with a noir flourish, which sounds more exciting than it actually is. DP John Seitz, who has photographed some of the greatest film noirs, composes in a utilitarian fashion lacking a convincing style and failing to create atmosphere or tension. The effects photography in the crash scene is laughably amateurish, looking more like a Poverty Row production.
James Gatz, now Jay Gatsby (Alan Ladd) is a Jazz Age powerbroker, his Victorian mansion home to swinging parties and drunken revelries. The story arc is concerned with his rise and subsequent fall, which is told mostly in flashback. Where the novel introduces us to Gatsby through the perspective of his neighbor Nick Carraway (Macdonald Carey), the screenplay instead gives us an immediate omniscient viewpoint into his past. As the story unfolds, we get several long flashbacks that detail his relationships and regrets. The novel keeps Gatsby great and mysterious, a stranger that verges on kinship but the film rejects any narrative ambiguity or subtly. By shifting point of view, the magical tempest is diverted harmlessly into the ground like electricity through a lightning rod.
Alan Ladd as the titular protagonist is excellent in portraying a man who needs to be more than he is, small of stature but big on success, who judges himself through the eyes of others where money is the measuring stick to status and respect. Ladd’s performance is often subtle and shy, yet full of fury when threatened. The supporting cast is adequate and fulfill their roles functionally, but they remain bland and expressionless. Except Shelly Winters as the jilted paramour, whose shrill voice and fierce anxiety dominate her few scenes, and Elisha Cook Jr. as Gatsby’s wartime cohort, who actually survives the final act.
Gatz willingly becomes the fall guy for his muse and learns too late an axiom of life: Happiness isn’t having more, it’s wanting less.
Final Grade: C
