The Great Gatsby (1974)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating	?
Year Of Production	1974
Running Time	137:32
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (65:57)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jack Clayton
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Robert Redford Mia Farrow Bruce Dern Karen Black Scott Wilson Sam Waterston Lois Chiles Howard Da Silva Roberts Blossom Edward Herrmann Elliott Sullivan Arthur Hughes Kathryn Leigh Scott
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	Lou Handman Nelson Riddle

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired Slovenian French German Swedish Danish Norwegian Finnish Dutch Bulgarian Icelandic Portuguese Hebrew Greek Croatian Arabic Turkish Polish Italian Spanish Romanian Czech Hungarian Serbian	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     There's an elemental danger in trying to translate a literary classic to screen, and every one of those dangers is exhibited in this 1974 presentation of The Great Gatsby. Whilst Robert Redford is dashing and Sam Waterston is suitably ingenuous, this presentation lacks the subtlety and irony of its written source.

     Simply told, it's the 1920s and Waterston is the naïve Nick Carraway, cousin to the flamboyant and indulgent Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow). Daisy languors within the privilege of a loveless but fabulously wealthy marriage. She collects intrigues to shore her against ennui and embroils young innocent Nick in her games. Her husband Tom (Bruce Dern) is quite blatantly conducting a town affair with Myrtle (Karen Black) - the wife of grease monkey George (Scott Wilson). Daisy's interest is piqued when Nick confirms that his neighbour is none other than the enigmatic multimillionaire, Jay Gatsby (Redford) - legendary host of the best parties around.

     As Nick tags along for the ride, he becomes party to connecting up Daisy and Jay, who we discover were war-time lovers. However, Jay at the time was a poor boy and, as Daisy so succinctly states it "rich girls do not marry poor boys."

     The original book by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a bitter and ironic examination of how heavy the tread of the rich can be on the poor, but much of the satire is somehow lost in this cinematic version. It lacks the insight or the humanising of the text, and overall tends to come across as an unengaging and shrill piece, in spite of the best efforts of Francis Ford Coppola as the screen writer. It looks every one of its 31 years.

Video

     The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 16x9 enhanced.

     The overall quality of this transfer is rather poor. It suffers from significant low level noise and looks rather "grubby" and flat. Sharpness is not too completely compromised, although compression issues do exist, and there is frequent evidence of edge enhancement. The grain levels are extremely high, making the overall result somewhat murky and ill-defined.

     The colours are rather flat and dull, and the plethora of soft focus and cross-field lenses used tended to wash out the colour even more, although that is more a criticism of the original source rather than this particular transfer.

     The disc is filled to the gunnels with transfer and film artefacts. Aliasing is not too distracting, but there appears to have been no attempt to clean up the print, with extensive dust spots and scratch marks marring the entire production.

     This is an RSDL disc, with the layer change between Chapters 6 and 7 at 66:33. It is a change that presents no particular disruption to the presentation.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     The soundtrack is delivered in English Dolby Digital 5.1 and is actually quite good.

      The dialogue is very clear, but rather flat and presented very evenly over the front speakers. Subtitles are timely, accurate and very legible. Audio sync is just ever-so-slightly lagging, but not to the extent that it is a major distraction from the action.

     The music is rather florid and melodramatic, probably a choice of its times, but lending a rather soap opera feel to the proceedings which it didn't need.

      There is surprisingly good surround presence, with plenty of atmospheric sound effects introduced into the soundscape.

      Subwoofer activity is very rarely present, although not really necessary in a film of this kind anyway.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

     The menu is static and silent.

      With the exception of an additional French soundtrack on the R1 version, there seems little difference between the 2 presentations.

     It's always a big risk trying to portray a classic, and, in its favour, this production won 2 Oscars - one for costume design (justified), and one for musical score (questionable).

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall