Great Gatsby, The (1949) (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Sep 12, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Elliott NugentRelease Date(s)
1949 (August 12, 2025)Studio(s)
Paramount Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Long unavailable, the 1949 film of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is not a good movie, but a real curio nonetheless. Filmed before in 1926, and later in 1974 and 2013, never satisfactorily, the 1949 version, begun by director John Farrow but completed by playwright Elliott Nugent, offers a surprisingly good cast led by Alan Ladd, and an interesting if anachronistic film noir look trying to compensate for its lack of period authenticity—all by itself, the Jazz Age with all its sinning is scrupulously suppressed under Production Code restrictions.
Quite unlike the novel, the movie opens in the then present-day of 1949, with middle-aged Nick Carraway (Macdonald Carey) and Jordan Baker (Ruth Hussey), his ex-flapper wife, visiting the grave of Jay Gatsby. In flashbacks (and, a la Passage to Marseille, flashbacks-within-flashbacks), Gatsby’s life unfolds.
Gatsby (Ladd) is an uber-rich gangster bootlegger who buys a sprawling estate on Long Island Sound. There he hosts wild parties populated by veritable strangers, the sole purpose of which is to attract the attention of former girlfriend Daisy (Betty Field), now married to millionaire Tom Buchanan (Barry Sullivan), they living directly across the river. Gatsby uses neighbor and Daisy’s second cousin Carraway, and Jordan, a comparatively poor hanger-on, to finagle a private meeting with Daisy. Unhappy with her husband’s philandering, he having an affair with Myrtle (Shelley Winters), the floozy wife of gas station owner George Wilson (Howard Da Silva), Daisy still yearns for Gatsby but is weak-willed when it comes to leaving her controlling husband.
This Gatsby is so watered-down by Production Code self-censorship, at times character motivations are obscured to the point of inexplicability. In the film, for example, Barry Sullivan’s Tom becomes almost sympathetic, a good provider for his wife whom gangster Gatsby wants to steal away, whereas in the novel Tom is an abusive, insufferable, bigoted snob. The Code’s Joseph Breen strenuously objected to the first draft screenplay by producer Richard Maibum (later of the James Bond movies) and Cyril Hume, denouncing it for “their work for depicting adultery, excessive drinking, unpunished manslaughter, bootlegging, and other perceived moral transgressions.” Further, Breen objected to the hedonistic lifestyles associated with the Jazz age, and insisted upon the insertion of preachy moralizing (the cringe-worthy opening and closing scenes).
All this defuses much of the original novel’s power, but the film compensates for these losses some. The biggest problem with the far more faithful 1974 was the egregious miscasting of Robert Redford as Gatsby. Ladd, by comparison, is an almost perfect fit, Ladd’s enigmatic private eyes and Western movie heroes not far removed from the outwardly emotionally detached yet inwardly obsessive Fitzgerald antihero, a dashing Charles Foster Kane type in many respects. Macdonald Carey is pretty good but too old and no match for Sam Waterson in the ’74 version, and while Mia Farrow’s Daisy in that film more accurately captures the qualities of Fitzgerald’s character in most respects, Betty Field, a better actress, brings it off. After Ladd, though, the other noteworthy performances are by Hussey, Winters, and Da Silva, the latter somewhat cast against type as a deferential toady.
The production impresses with unbelievably HUGE interiors of Gatsby’s mansion that must have tested the limits of Paramount’s biggest soundstage. The studio wasn’t particularly behind the film—Fitzgerald’s novel had not fully gained its literary prestige at this point—so other aspects of the film are borderline sloppy. A fatal hit-and-run is accomplished optically, and while the effect is undeniably startling, it’s also so goofily unreal one imagines audiences laughing uproariously after the initial shock.
Kino-Lorber’s Blu-ray of The Great Gatsby, in its original 1.37:1 full-frame and black-and-white, is a good encoding from a 4K master, not quite stellar but above average, is sharp with good blacks and contrast. The DTS-HD 2.0 mono is adequate, and supported by optional English subtitles. The disc itself is Region “A” encoded.
Supplements consist of a 2012 video interview of Alan Ladd’s son David by film historian Alan K. Rode, running 26 minutes. Also included is a good audio commentary track by Paul Talbot, along with a trailer.
Certainly intriguing even if disappointing overall, the 1949 Gatsby is worth a look, primarily for Alan Ladd’s performance. Recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV