Movies usually express ideas in a clearer way than books do. This holds true for the famous novel "The Great Gatsby" as well. After watching the film, every little segment and event about the book in my mind is now combined with all those vivid pictures to form an invisible link. But despite the clear advantage of the film, it also hides its own flaws beneath itself.
The biggest disadvantage of the film is that it is only a shortened version of the book. The movie contains only the dialogues - and clearly not even all the dialogues in the book, but the conversations are only a small portion of the book itself and stand little significance. The book was considered famous partly because of its amazing plot, which was represented by the film, but also because of its tiny careful settings and details, which cannot be fully illustrated with the movie.
The cover of the first edition of The Great Gatsby...
The Great Gatsby (1926 film)
The Great Gatsby (1974 film)Basically the movie squeezed out the juice and left behind the dryness of the fruit without sweetness.
The movie also has the flaw of distorting the figures of the actual characters in the original book. One clear example is the portrait of Tom Buchanans. Tom was described as "a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty" with " a cruel body" who "had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football in New Haven", but the Tom in the movie seemed to retain a completely different description: weak-looking, lean body, and clearly does not seem to be a football player in anyway. Also, "Owl Eyes" - the drunk first encountered in Gatsby's library at one of his parties, did not even show up in the entire film. There are also other minor distortions of the characters, as well as the story lines...