Evening star., 1949-08-05

expand fully into the Jay Gatsby
who was the hard-boiled hero OF
Fitzgerald's novel. He is required
to work his way into and out OF
this pictures situations without
the aid of gun and only once is
he permitted a quick swing to an
other characters jaw. This Is pot
quite justice either to the actor or
the authors man.
He suggests more than demon
strates, therefore, that Gatsby was
quite a fellow in his original di-
mensions.
1t is superf1uous to say that
1.-THE Great Gatsby' is f1ashback
Aim. It picks up Jay When he is
buying his country home on Long
Island, the mansion across the
cove from the Blue Book Buchan-
ans estate. AS the head of a
mammoth illegal liquor syndicate,
he has the money and motive for
making this deal.
The former is much clearer,
but the picture wastes little time
in explaining the motive. in dis
closing what made Gatsby what
he is that day.
He loves two things in life.
money and women. He has been
enormously successful in acquir-
ing both with the single excep-
ton of Daisy Buchanan. Daisy
left him for a rich, urbane play
boy while he was overseas fight
ing World War I. GatSby has
never known a serene day since.
He attributes this emotional dis
comfort to the fact that Daisy
rejected him because he was not
equally placed, socially and flnan-
cially, with Tom Buchanan.
Between the f1ashbacks, the &C
tion of THE Great Gatsby' is
the story of a courtship. a fur
iously energetic young interloper
venturing into a frenzied society
to steal the girl of his dreams.
Gatsby finds both the girl and
the society she lives in highly
The latter resents his
crudeness and the power of his
drive, but it does his bidding.
The girl who has grown emotion
ally wobbly in a hysterical marital
arrangement is even easier to
manage. In the end, however, it
is Gatsby whose nature is re-
volted by the total spectacle OF
the 20s and the people in 1t.
In the act of dying, he comes
off with more honor than those
who survive in Fitzgerald's bitter
narrative.
The tempo of The Great Cats
by is good movie tempo. but
too fast to get much below the
surface of the varied scenes and
their occupants. 1t looks at their
unlovely loves. their sinister
search for a good time. their high
speed dashes from party to party.
and liaison to liaison. 1t looks
at them but it seldom examines
them as Fitzgerald did. Yet the
brief scrutiny comes up frequent
ly with dramatic passage. as if
even at a quick glance the i'm
plications of the 20s were not
altogether to be missed.
OF the individual performances,
the best is that of Betty Field
as the lost young lady who should
have married Gatsby in the first
place. It runs along at an ar
resting state of hySteria. The
hard. self contained female of
the piece is excellently played, too,
by Ruth Hussey.
Apart from Ladd, the males who
do most justice to Fitzgerald S
characters are Macdonald Carey
as the compromising aristocrat;;
Barry Sullivan as the naughty,
philandering Tom Buchanan;
Henry Hull in the comparative
bit role of ruthless old Tom Cody,
and Howard Da Silva as the fran
tic filling station man who could
take only so much Of his wife's
playing around.
On the whole. however, The
Great Gatsby" Is more sketch
than a picture of the period Fitz-
gerald wrote about with such last
ing accent.