Rare News Desk
As an enthusiast of 1920s culture and design, I expected to be appalled at the much hyped new film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” by director Baz Luhrmann. Though Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge” is an all-time favorite, what I wanted from Gatsby was a portrayal less like “Chicago,” more like “The Artist.” Less 2013, more 1922. What I got was neither, really.
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The film is visually dazzling, even absent the optional 3-D special effects. It’s an other-worldly tale of a rags-to-riches World War I soldier-turned-bootlegger whose obsession with an old-moneyed rich girl from his past leads to his untimely, abrupt demise. Oh, and there are other characters involved, such as the husband and cousin and gal pal of “Daisy Buchanan,” the object of “Jay Gatsby’s” unrequited romantic quest.
In other words, the manic, bigger than life cinematography, the hyper-saturated costumes and sets, the all-around visual razzle-dazzle rather eclipse an otherwise epic story of human envy, ambition, hubris, and callousness. The movie is a fantasy version of the book and the era. The actors present mostly insubstantial, uninspiring characters who seem designed merely to populate the sumptuous, spectacular visual universe: the glitz and glamour of Art Deco style and wealth, a surrealistic portrayal of grit-and-grime poverty, the dizzying decent of the camera into a blazing 1929 (!) Duesenberg.
If you weren’t told so by narrator “Nick Carraway,” would you even know it’s 1922? The novel was set in 1922, just four years after the end of World War I, and published in 1925, the year of the iconic Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. Modernity in design and social mores was trending. Young urban women were bobbing their hair and wearing dresses hemmed (gasp!) just above the ankle. Art Deco skyscrapers were filling the skyline in lower Manhattan. Motion pictures with organ accompanists (predating recorded soundtracks, of course) were a burgeoning form of entertainment, competing with vaudeville. “Robin Hood”, starring Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery, was the top grossing film in 1922 and ostensibly the first to have a Hollywood premiere, at the newly opened Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre. As automobiles gained in popularity and affordability, Congress passed the Federal Highway Act in 1921 to develop a nationwide system of paved roads. And Prohibition, ratified in 1919, was by 1922 creating a newly rich criminal class of bootleggers and gangsters.
Compared to the 1910s, consumed as they were with the Great War and Victorian/Edwardian era politics, culture, and technology, the 1920s must have seemed downright heady times in some quarters (and certainly through the rose-tinted glasses of history). Luhrmann tries to capture that new, glamorous moment in time by reimagining a fantastic New York of 1922. Everything is too bawdy, too glitzy, too referential, and too racially integrated. Too “over the top,” to use an expression straight from that era.
Instead of modest, slouchy dresses in relatively subtle colors that fall to mid-calf (see my respective Pinterest boards on ca. 1922 fashion and 1920s fashion generally), Lurhmann offers close-fitting, cleavage-bearing frocks adorned in huge iridescent baubles, beads, feathers, and bling. Some are too short and scant for the era, some too long and voluminous. “Myrtle Wilson’s” outfits are way too gaudy. Women didn’t really wear trousers, as the “Jordan Baker” character might suggest. Created by fashion designer Miuccia Prada, a selection of these costumes is now on display in New York.
Instead of the great Al Jolson, we get a soundtrack put together by hip-hop mogul Jay-Z. Jolson was a top singer in 1922, with something like three top 10 songs. Instead of “Toot Toot Tootsie (Goodbye)” or “Fannie Brice’s My Man,” big hits in 1922, we get Bryan Ferry and a bunch of modern songs and artists (that, to be honest, I’ve barely heard of).
But somehow the film makes you forget that it’s supposed to be 1922. At least, I hope no one walks away under the delusion it’s representative of that year or decade. As it turns out, that is both the strength and the weakness of the film. Anyone wanting a cinematic glimpse of that era would be better served watching “The Artist” or a Harold Lloyd or Mary Pickford film. Or perhaps this lone, surviving one-minute trailer from a 1926 film adaptation of Gatsby.
Christine Hall is a member of the Art Deco Society of Washington
