Abstract
Baz Luhrmann’s Red Curtain trilogy of Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet, and Moulin Rouge! progressively reduces narrative in favor of recounting already known stories, emphasizing performance and spectacle, and deploying music to stimulate “participation.” For The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann deploys Leonardo DiCaprio’s star person—constructed from roles as a troubled youth, an idealistic lover, a con artist, and a man of mystery—as a short hand in presenting Fitzgerald’s protagonist. DiCapro especially evokes Howard Hughes from Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, which in turn references Citizen Kane. Amalgamating Jay Gatsby, directly and indirectly, with DiCaprio, Hughes, Charles Foster Kane, William Randolph Hearst, and Orsen Welles clarifies and mythologizes the already simplified outline of Fitzgerald’s hero for Luhrmann’s operatic and ritualistic mode of cinema.
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Notes
- 1.
Baz Luhrmann, 41. Cook’s is the first and best book-length study of Luhrmann’s work to date. I rely on it for much background information as well as for insightful examination of the films prior to The Great Gatsby.
- 2.
Interview with Mark Mordue, Ryan, 17.
- 3.
Ryan, 9.
- 4.
Cook, 58. This was set in India, and Luhrmann’s research trip brought an important Bollywood influence to his filmmaking.
- 5.
November 1, 1996.
- 6.
Box Office Mojo, https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2305590785/ weekend/.
- 7.
The Great Gatsby was only modestly successful, given a boost when one hundred and fifty thousand copies were distributed to American soldiers in World War II. See the foreword to the 2018 Scribner edition, by Eleanor Lanahan, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s granddaughter.
- 8.
Cook, 65.
- 9.
Interview with Pauline Adamek. Ryan, 27.
- 10.
Cook, 66.
- 11.
Interestingly, Mercutio’s death and relationship with Romeo seem to carry more emotional power than Romeo’s with Juliet, perhaps anticipating a homoerotic subtext in the Nick Carraway/Gatsby relationship that some find in the later film.
- 12.
Cook, 90–91.
- 13.
Cook, 94. Cook, who writes extremely well about Strictly Ballroom and Romeo+Juliet, is restricted to describing filmic style in her analysis of Moulin Rouge because there is little narrative, character, or dialogue to explicate. So her account of Moulin Rouge reflects her interviews with Luhrmann and his statement of his intentions, as when she writes: “Luhrmann’s investment in artifice creates a world that is distinct from reality, but is nevertheless truthful in that it enables the audience to respond emotionally to the ideals of beauty, truth, freedom and love adhered to by the characters, and emerge from the experience with a changed perspective. The emphasis is on the interaction of audience and film.” 93.
- 14.
Reprinted in Ryan, 55 (Voumard), 76 (Pride), 119–20 (Mattram).
- 15.
Ryan, 11–12.
- 16.
For Campbell, the adventure of the hero typically follows a pattern that includes: “a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return.” Campbell, 35–37.
- 17.
To John Lahr; Ryan, 85.
- 18.
To Lahr; Ryan, 84.
- 19.
Luhrmann ignores entirely the last half century of academic film theory, especially psychoanalytic notions of identification with characters that knit viewers as subjects into the fabric of unfolding narratives.
- 20.
To Lahr; Ryan, 98.
- 21.
Ibid., 49–51.
- 22.
The film has an additional one minute of credits.
- 23.
In the narrative frame, a handsome but scruffy young man (Rodrigo Santoro) “awakes into a dream,” where he encounters a star (Nicole Kidman) he does not recognize; they have a moment of romance, then she returns to her world. There is no need to elaborate this predigested story, so the film’s two minutes can be employed in presenting a glittering simulation of Manhattan’s lights, Kidman in a sumptuous gown and diamond jewelry, then glancing back from a red carpet awards ceremony setting toward her remembered love. A marginalized artist is again a central figure, in counterpoint here to the celebrated actress. The artist, like Joseph Campbell’s hero, is: “… a personage of exceptional gifts [who] frequently is honored by his society, frequently unrecognized or disdained.” Campbell, 35–37.
- 24.
To Stephen Galloway; Ryan, 132.
- 25.
Cook, 130.
- 26.
November 25, 2008.
- 27.
To Maddox; Ryan, 122.
- 28.
48.
- 29.
Though panned by critics, the 1974 film was successful at the box office mainly due to prerelease ticket sales because of a publicity campaign worthy of a Luhrmann film. This brought Redford to the cover of Time magazine, along with an article based on an interview with Robert Evans. Time, March 18, 1974, pages 82–91. According to that article, “Paramount signed four companies to market a selection of ‘Gatsby products’ linked through advertising to the film” in a campaign “now recognized as the prototype for Hollywood’s marketing of its blockbusters.” Stoddart, 103.
- 30.
Romeo and Juliet (1968), with Leonard Whiting as Romeo.
- 31.
Redford was a star by 1974. It is difficult to identify useful precursors for the Gatsby role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or The Sting (1973), despite the latter film’s 1930s setting; perhaps images from The Candidate (1972) or The Way We Were (1973) were more suggestive to Jack Clayton and his casting director.
- 32.
Fitzgerald, 2.
- 33.
98. Luhrmann echoes this with a reference by Nick to Gatsby as a sixteen-year-old.
- 34.
Its reputation seems to have faded with generational change, as has that of most studio era films.
- 35.
Fitzgerald, 48.
- 36.
Ibid., 98. “He was a son of God.”
- 37.
Echoing the Ladd Gatsby.
- 38.
Snow in Fitzgerald’s novel is mentioned by Nick in association with his memory of and attachment to the Midwest. 175.
- 39.
Fitzgerald, 110.
- 40.
Kane mentions the many guests they have had, and that if she looks carefully in the West Wing, she will probably find “a dozen of the vacationers still in residence.” In this, Welles might be echoing Fitzgerald’s novel; Luhrmann echoes Welles and the novel.
- 41.
Trakin.
- 42.
A term that carries over to audience reading of texts as well; see Marie Martin and “Le remake secret,” referred to in the Introduction.
- 43.
Verevis, 23.
- 44.
1.
- 45.
Barth, 62–76.
- 46.
Ibid., 67 and 64.
- 47.
Barth, 73.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
460–470.
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Mooney, W.H. (2021). Citizen Kane (1941) and Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013). In: Adaptation and the New Art Film. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62934-2_9
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