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3 , 15/4/2010
(Revisiting The Great Gatsby, 1974)

Geoffrey Wagner proposes 3 broad categories of literary translation


1) Transposition=minimum of apparent interference
2) Commentary=the film-maker has a different intention from the
novelist
3) Analogy=the adaptation departs radically from the source text and
can therefore be considered as a different work of art.
*One indication of whether a film adaptation has succeeded might
therefore be if the film contains something of the spirit of the novel and
whether it has entertained, engaged or provoked rather than how closely
it resembles its source material.
*films are often judged in terms of the degree to which they adhere or
diverge from their literary source material what we may call, the fallacy
of fidelity and the film is seen either as a remarkably faithful adaptation
or as one which fails entirely to capture the spirit of the original.
Post-Saussurian issue
If form cannot separate from content (whether because of their
insoluble bond or because content is simply an illusion) then what
remains to pass between a novel and its film adaptation?
=>paradoxical situation?
Either adaptation is treated as theoretical impossibility or
There must be found way of treatment without committing semiotic
heresy

Outline of the model to be used in class:


1) Comparison between the two discourses on a strictly narrative level.
Questions to be asked: What has been kept of the novels narrative? What

has been reduce and why? What has been changed from novel to film
narrative? What has been added and why?
2) Study of the apparent results of the transformation from verbal to visual
representation from telling to showing. What happens when words become
flesh, so to speak? Do we get a different impression of the characters of
the plot and the relationship between them when we can watch the
situations for ourselves, than, for example, when we are forced to rely on
the novels first person narrator?
3) Has the film adaptation tried to develop film equivalents to elements in
the novel that are not directly transferable? What has for example
happened to the interior monologues, to the shifting point of view of the
novel, to the poetic language of the book? Has the film used some of its
specific elements like music, light, color, camera movements, film editing
to compensate or perhaps even to create new aspects? Techniques (closeup, voice-over, etc)
4) An overview of the films main theme or themes compared with the
novels. How has the film in question interpreted the novel? What may be
the reasons for this choice? Has it perhaps to do with a modern reading of
an old story? Has gender anything to do with it female author, male
director, for example? How was racial and sexual identity represented?

The ending of Great Gatsby connects the novel with the American
history.
Importance of colors Green hope!
Yellow it spreads somehow death.
Gray Cynicism, moral corruption
Careless people, indifferent. (Semiotic analysis of the colors.)
Blue the sea
The moonlight
(Fred Marcus, 1971)

A novel is a remembrance of things past; a film is a remembrance


of films present While the novel is a narrative that deploys past
events moving towards a present, a film directly displays the
present the essence of film is its immediacy, and the immediacy
is grounded in its tenselessness.

Introductory scene accuracy in Nicks words, but also a few


additions! Upper camera angle is Toms viewpoint (a hint for Toms
character).
Nick knows everything but discloses nothing because he wants us to
judge them ourselves. Nevertheless, he says that Gatsby proves himself to
be great. Gatsby turns out great. He is the only person for whom he
makes a remark (but he also sets the challenge of proving him great for us
too).

Narrative Viewpoint the novel

The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a limited and in a


sense reliable narrator not because he is dishonest, but rather
because he is an innocent like King Lear, he hath ever but slenderly
known himself

Nick introduces us to Long Island society, in particular to Gatsby


and Daisy, without making any moral judgments, leaving the reader
to make his or her own discoveries.

Since the book is narrated in retrospect, Nick is fully aware of the


eventual tragedy, but to tell the story he recaptures naivety and
gradual understanding, so that we can share the discovery.

The novel opens in a leisurely, discursive style; Nick introduces


himself as a listener, a confidant, slow to judge others, but ready to
make up his mind about the world.

It is extremely subtle self-portrait which will resonate through the


book, and as events unfold, many readers will turn back to these
opening pages, to see what light they throw on the narrator who is
part of the story, and yet at the same time somehow detached from
it

The Film
After a credit sequence montage of Gatsbys palatial, but vacant
house (including the fatal swimming pool), Jack Claytons 1974
adaptation, with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola gives us
some edited snippets of Nicks introduction to take us briskly into
the film.

Despite the transfer of 1st person narration to 1st person voice-over


(a common enough feature of narrative films, especially those
adapted from first-person novels), our view of Nick is visually in the
third person we are observing him at the same time as listening to
him. What is interesting here, though, is the choices that have been
made to introduce us visually to Nick.
We first see Nick losing his hat, losing control of his boat and almost
colliding with a much larger craft; then as he pulls into shore and
alights from the boat; we look down on him briefly from Toms
(superior) point of view. (Visual depiction of Nicks disorientation. He
is a fish out of the water.)
These effects may seem a little crude taken in isolation, but it is the
kind of visual information that works almost unconsciously on an
audience, who, unless they rewind a videotape, are generally
unable to turn back the pages to check on their initial impressions
of a character.

Characters
GATSBY: While Redford wan an obvious box-office choice to play Gatsby,
having just come off huge successes in The Sting and The Way We Were,
he doesnt get Gatsby, choosing to play Gatsbys mysteriousness as
woodenness and aloofness. He looks fantastic in his Oscar-winning suits,
but its hard to care much about what comes out of his lock-jawed mouth.
DAISY: Mia Farrow is equally disappointing. In the book, Daisy has a
natural flirtatiousness that has been driving men wild for a decade.
In the film, Farrow comes across as nothing more than fragile and jittery.
She simply doesnt seem worth all the trouble men go to in pursuit of her
affections.
TOM: Bruce Dem is wiry and whiny. He has none of the looming physical
presence that supposedly makes Tom such a menacing figure.
CARRAWAY: Sam Waterston fares better. Nick is the narrator of both the
book and the movie, so he gets all the good speeches. Waterstons sad
eyes get sadder and sadder as Gatsbys tragic flaws propel him toward his
ugly fate.
New York Times on The Great Gatsby
An illustrated encyclopedia of the manners and morals of the 20s moves
spaniel-like through Fs text

Its faults:
1) Its all-too-reverential attitude. It completely mistakes the essence of Fs
novel, which is not in its story but in its elliptical literary style that dazzles
us by the manner in which it evokes character and event, rather than with
the characters and events themselves.
2) A stunning lack of cinematic imagination

Sadly, the movie treats Fs flawless novel as little more than a Jazzage costume drama and it goes heavy on the costumes, light on the
drama

Gatsby is a story about identity, the American Dream, second


chances and most famously, the impossibility of repeating the past.
None of these is developed in film.

[27 29 guest lecturer on the issue of passing Human Stain


and other cultural examples]

A Summary of Events
1. Nick introduces himself as narrator as well as the Buchanans
2. Myrtle is introduced
3. Nick invited to GGs party
4. Drive to NY, some of GGs past. Jordan provides Daisys version of
the past.
5. The meeting at Nicks house. Reunion.
6. More about GGs past. GGs 2nd party.
7. The Plaza scene. Myrtles death.
8. More about GGs past. His romantic readiness and his death.
9. The funeral, the father the moment of vision
Chronology of Events

1917-18 GG + Daisy have an affair

1919 Daisy marries Tom

Early June Nick meets with Tom, Daisy

Few days before 4th July 1922, Nick spends an evening with Myrtle
and Tom

In July Nicks tea-party

In Sept. GG is killed

One afternoon in October Nick meets Tom on 5th avenue

1923 Nick returns West

Present time 1923-24, Nick writes the story

Relationship between the four locations of action

West Egg dominated by GGs mansion. Vulgarity of the party goers


but also the energy and vitality of these people

East Egg formality, tradition, status of inherited wealth

NY a magnet to both possessing established wealth and those in


pursuit of it. Full of light and color, beauty and life.

The Valley of Ashes the grim underside of all 3 above. A pervasion


of rural fertility. A wasteland.

ALL 4 are interconnected

Next class: Tuesday 20th April 2010. The Grapes of Wrath. (Read it even
with Sparknotes summaries)

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