Recall 1974 's more immaculately fashioned movie version of `` Gatsby , '' which was directed by ace literary adaptor Jack Clayton ( `` The Innocents '' ) , boasted a screenplay by `` The Godfather 's '' Francis Ford Coppola and starred Robert Redford as Gatsby , Mia Farrow as Daisy and Sam Waterston as Nick . Gene Seymour : How can any one translate beauty of Fitzgerald prose in ` ` Gatsby ? '' They keep trying , he says . Lurmann film comes close to capturing Fitzgerald 's emotional spirit . The book is thin , its characters distant , and that 's precisely the point , he says . Seymour : Reverent , literal adaptations do n't the novel . But it 's succeeds .
Gene Seymour : How can any one translate beauty of Fitzgerald prose in ` ` Gatsby ? '' They keep trying , he says . Lurmann film comes close to capturing Fitzgerald 's emotional spirit . The book is thin , its characters distant , and that 's precisely the point , he says . Seymour : Reverent , literal adaptations do n't the novel . But it 's succeeds .