We’re staunch advocates of reading the book, no matter how much you enjoyed the film; in the case of The Great Gatsby, we’re joined in this by Zelda Fitzgerald, the author’s wife, who said of the 1926 adaptation (directed by Herbert Brenon) that it was ‘ROTTEN and awful and terrible’; the couple walked out of the screening. It was filmed again in 1949 (dir. Eliot Nugent) and 1974 (dir. Jack Clayton), the latter version from a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola, disappointed by the result, said, ‘The script that I wrote did not get made.’ Of Luhrmann’s production, the New York Times advised that it was best enjoyed if the viewer ‘put aside whatever literary agenda you are tempted to bring with you’. We say, then, put aside the movies and read the book – the original and the best!
