Ready or Not, Here comes Gatsby

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Great Expectations. Most found Gatsby visually beautiful, an example of a lavish budget used intelligently. Acknowledging the movie's opulence, one guest said that it is "very slow in getting started, ran awfully long, and the characters were about impossible to get into at all." Part of the problem apparently is the pace. Both Coppola's script and Clayton's direction treat Fitzgerald reverentially, giving each scene almost equal emphasis. Another problem, surprising in a Coppola script, is wooden dialogue. Several viewers complain that the actors cannot speak long stretches of straight Fitzgerald prose convincingly. Unfortunately, the chief victims seem to be Redford and Farrow.

There was more curiosity about Farrow than anyone, but after the show, least agreement on her performance. It is an uneven portrayal: "She comes, she goes, but in the end she just fades away." Most of the praise for actors is for Bruce Bern and Sam Waterston, though just about everyone agrees that Howard da Silva's brief appearance as the gambler is the best bit in the picture. There is also agreement that the picture does not grip the emotions. Said one departing guest, "What's that line in the ads, 'Gone is the romance that was so divine . . ."

The reaction of an audience of Paramount exhibitors and their guests is hardly a bellwether, but the possibility exists that Paramount's supersell could backfire by bringing in audiences primed to expect a masterpiece and then letting them down. A modestly good movie can suffer from great expectations.

Yablans scoffs at the notion that the heavy promotion might hurt Gatsby. "No matter what we do, the film will stand on its own merits," he says. "My only concern is not whether we've oversold it, but rather about the intellectual, purist approach the critics might take. I sense," he adds darkly, "that some of them have a real you-better-show-me attitude."

The suspense—and the hype—is nearly at an end. Gatsby will finally have its premiere in New York March 27 with the last big burst of ballyhoo: an old-fashioned gala replete with truckloads of white roses, pounds of caviar and enough breast of pheasant to endanger the species. After that, audiences across the country will get the chance to make the kind of choice only they can make: to go to the movies and see Gatsby or stay home and read the book.