Literary Analysis Of Baz Luhrmann's 'The Great Gatsby'

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Baz Luhrmann is an auteur; his films follow a simple common theme of difficult love and he has a distinctive recognisable directing style using bright and colourful costumes, exaggerated acting, fast paced editing and anachronistic music. It is a style that Baz Luhrmann describes as “theatricalized cinema-style”. Both films open with a theatrical start. Moulin Rouge starts with a long shot of a theatre with red curtains and the sounds of an audience clapping and cheering. The curtains then open to reveal a screen with Century Fox’s logo. The curtains close and open again to show a title card with “ 20th Century Fox presents” to the next card that says “a BazMark production”, and then Moulin Rouge. The Great Gatsby starts with a gate design surrounding the Warner Bros. logo which fades into the same gates with the Village Roadshow Pictures logo which fades into the BazMark logo and eventually to show “J.G”. From here the audience enters Luhrmann’s own theatrical creative world. Both stories are told by a narrator, Christian in Moulin Rouge, and Nick in the Great Gatsby remembering their best moments and how they end in tragedy. Moulin Rouge starts with a depressed Christian typing the love story that is about him and Satine, likewise, the Great Gatsby starts with a depressed Nick reminiscing about Gatsby. Both films end with Christian and Nick finishing their stories. In both movies the two main characters make grand entrances and both instances their lives end tragically in