The Great Gatsby

The first sound adaptation of Scott Fitzgerald's classic. Although some of the detail of the novel has been changed (and Betty Field gives an unusually weak performance, miscast as Daisy Buchanan), this scores over Jack Clayton's lavish and longer 1974 version by the casting of Alan Ladd as Gatsby, so much more convincing as a man with a dark and mysterious past than one-dimensional glamour-puss Robert Redford. At the same time, the picture is less a '20s costume drama than a '40s film noir, shot in moody monochrome by the maestro John F Seitz.