Film

The Great Gatsby

Name: The Great Gatsby
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1974
Cast: Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Scott Wilson

Other titles called The Great Gatsby: the 2013 film.

Drama

Fitzgerald's masterpiece gets a sumptuous 1970s film treatment—all Art Deco glamour, period-perfect costumes, and the melancholy of a man who loved too hard. Redford is perfectly cast as Gatsby, beautiful and hollow. It's slow, elegant, and suffused with the ache of impossible dreams. For anyone who wants to understand why this novel endures.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love slow-burning period melodrama where glittering surfaces carry a sadness, and you don't mind lingering on costume and party sets to feel the ache of longing.

Skip it if the 1974 version's pace is leisurely at nearly two and a half hours, and its visual gloss can feel more like a lavish stage than a living world.

What it asks of you: Settle in for just under two and a half hours of measured scenes, with dialogue doing more work than action and a mood that stays wistful rather than bright.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Chinatown1974

The same year, same moral clarity about corruption wearing a beautiful face. Jack Nicholson and Roman Polanski craft a noir about the past's inescapable hold. Intricate, cynical, masterful.

But It's darker and more baroque than Gatsby. If you want beauty over brutality, this will feel like a punch.

The Age of Innocence1993

Scorsese adapts Edith Wharton with the same visual lyricism and tragic understanding of wealth constraining desire. Daniel Day-Lewis smoulders as a man caught between passion and duty.

But Nearly three hours of restrained longing. The pacing is deliberate, almost stately—not everyone's appetite.

Singin' in the Rain1952

Pure cinema joy from the same golden-age Dream Factory that made Gatsby's world real. Gene Kelly's unbridled energy is the opposite of Gatsby's ache, but it captures the same intoxicated joy of performance.

But It's a musical, and aggressively cheerful. Gatsby fans seeking melancholy might find it exhausting.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Great Gatsby

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Carousel1956

Both are about a man's impossible fixation on a woman he can never truly have; both suggest that some desires are beautiful precisely because they're doomed.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical about obsession, love beyond death, and a man who haunts the woman he loved. It has Gatsby's yearning and melancholy wrapped in show-tune gorgeousness. Rarely discussed as a tragedy, but it absolutely is one.

But It's a musical from 1956, and the gender politics are uncomfortable by any standard. The whimsy masks something genuinely dark.

A Farewell to Arms1957

David Lean's adaptation of Hemingway—another lost love story set in a doomed world. Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones have the same star-crossed gravity as Redford and Farrow.

But The pacing feels dated now, and the romance can seem overwrought by modern standards.

Tender Is the Night1962

Another Fitzgerald novel, this time on film. Jason Robards and Joan Fontaine inhabit a world of wealth and moral decay on the Riviera. Visually gorgeous, genuinely tragic.

But Lesser Fitzgerald, and the film doesn't quite capture the novel's sophistication. You may want to read it instead.

The Last Tycoon1976

Elia Kazan's adaptation of Fitzgerald's final novel, with Robert De Niro as a Hollywood mogul unable to hold onto his past. Tragically unfinished, but achingly beautiful.

But The film itself feels incomplete—because it is. Structurally unsatisfying, even if the individual scenes shine.

Daisy Miller1974

Peter Bogdanovich's Henry James adaptation, shot the same year with similar visual restraint. Cybill Shepherd is luminous as a woman misunderstood by society, destroyed by its judgment.

But Genteel and slow. If you found Gatsby too stately, this will test your patience further.

Out of Africa1985

Sydney Pollack's epic about impossible love and the past's grip. Meryl Streep and Robert Redford (Gatsby himself!) as lovers caught between duty and desire, set against a dying colonial world.

But Long and languid, with a romanticized view of colonialism that hasn't aged well. Visually stunning but morally muddled.

A Passage to India1984

David Lean's final film about cultural misunderstanding and desire thwarted by class and empire. Judy Davis gives one of cinema's finest performances, raw and brilliant.

But Dense and demanding. The mystery at its heart never fully resolves, which some find frustrating.

The Master2012

Both explore how charisma conceals emptiness, how a beautiful facade can be mistaken for truth, and how those dazzled by a person can never see them clearly.

Paul Thomas Anderson's fever dream about power, charisma, and two men locked in a dance of need. Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman create something hypnotic and baroque. It moves like a novel, not a narrative.

But Abstract, demanding, and willfully obscure. It rewards obsession but resists clarity. Many people hate it.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both are about the lie we tell ourselves about the lives we want, and how the performance of that fantasy becomes more real than reality itself.

Charlie Kaufman's bewildering masterpiece about an artist creating a scale model of reality while his actual life collapses. Philip Seymour Hoffman as a man unable to separate fantasy from truth. Gorgeous, maddening, unforgettable.

But It's deliberately confusing and gets more abstract as it goes. You'll leave unsure what you just watched, and some people never forgive a film for that.