It’s a striking assembly, many creating individual moments that linger in the memory—yet somehow they never gel as an ensemble.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2024

The film was acknowledged as a technical triumph -- it won Oscars for its costume design and Nelson Riddle’s scoring -- yet dismissed on most other counts. Yet I’ve always had a soft spot for this third film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age tome.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2023

The settings are magnificent and most of the performances [are] very good.

Full Review | May 5, 2023

It's all very glittering, but where's the gold, the true gold?

Full Review | Jul 10, 2019

To a short, sleek novel like Gatsby, where the slight action moves forward like a capricious swimmer, nothing could be more destructive than the slow pace and top-heavy lavishness and overexplicitness.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2019

The folly of the film, lies, I think, in the damage done to the character of the narrator.

Full Review | Mar 2, 2018

Clayton is so obsessed with respecting the story that he turns it into a museum piece; you see the actors going through the paces of dramatizing a classic, rather than finding the heartbeat underneath.

Full Review | Jun 21, 2016

It is not a great film: but in capturing so much as a glimmer from the iridescence of the original, it becomes well worth seeing.

Full Review | Mar 11, 2015

Perhaps it was my lack of expectations that caused me to be pleasantly surprised.

Full Review | Mar 3, 2015

'70s adaptation is visually stunning but emotionally distant.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 30, 2014

[VIDEO ESSAY] Widely trashed by a cabal of critics who didn't know a good film when they saw it, Jack Clayton's 1974 rendition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel beautifully captures its romantic essence and caustic social indictments.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | May 9, 2013

The film is faithful to the letter of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel but entirely misses its spirit.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2013

It all gets rather tedious watching other people enjoy themselves, although a colourful recreation of the period that stays faithful to the novel makes the film easier to bear.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 6, 2013

In sum this picture is a total failure of every requisite sensibility. A long, slow, sickening bore.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2013

The color is rich, the photography superb, and the atmospherics of the roaring twenties are realistically and stunningly in evidence in this film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece novel, but that's it.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 26, 2007

The Francis Coppola script and Jack Clayton's direction paint a savagely genteel portrait of an upper class generation that deserved in spades what it got circa 1929 and after.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2007

Director Jack Clayton seems overawed by the opulence of the production as well as by the mythic presence of Fitzgerald -- and the result is a film of shimmering surface brilliance and almost complete lack of focus or substance.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2007

A literary adaptation that continually begs detrimental comparison with the novel, this relies too much on appearance, making little attempt to explore behind the beguiling '20s façade.

Full Review | Jun 24, 2006

Too slow, too dull. Redford lacked the danger of Fitzgerald's creation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 27, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 9, 2005