Gatsby le magnifique

F. Scott Fitzgerald's celebrated novel about king of Long Island high society in the 1920s and his tumultuous relationship with a married beauty comes to the screen in the 1970s via the hand of Francis Ford Coppola (as writer) and star-leads Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. So why is it so bloody awful? Could be the mismatched, miscast actors: Redford might be a plausible Gatsby if he were focused, but he's not in character here and his immobile face reveals nothing to us; as his Daisy, Farrow has some catty lines and works her little-girl smile and big eyes to some effect, but she looks like a child playing dress-up and has no chemistry whatsoever with Redford. Production is appropriately opulent, the jazz age is captured vividly, but the direction is deadly slow and the wordy script is a bummer, veering dangerously on the edge of soap opera (surely not Fitzgerald's intent). A hazy snooze. Perhaps this book is singularly unfilmmable? *1/2 from ****