Marion Ettlinger, celebrated for her pictures of authors, forbids her subjects to smile for their portraits. ”If one is going for an iconic moment, one shouldn’t smile.” Most art photographers assume that the smile is a mask that must be removed. Why Canada, expressly prohibits any traces of a smile in a passport photograph.

But on the other side of the aisle, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote that ”Accent is the soul of a language; it gives feeling and truth to it.” He might have also said that facial expressions – in particular smiles – give feeling and truth to talk.

In Far From the Madding Crowd, the spirited heroine Bathsheba is faced with a choice of three men. Only one of the suitors, Gabriel Oak, has an authentic smile:

When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to mere chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared around them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.

Of course Bathsheba ends up making the wrong choice. Had she been more astute she would have seen in Oak’s smile something more than cachet or capital. (Listen to me. I’m writing as though I think I am Jani Allan). Another intense smile was described by Charles Dickens in this way: “In came Mrs Fezzywig, one vast substantial smile.” Then there is  this:

He smiled, understandingly – much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to face – the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far are you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

Scott Fitzgerald describing Nick Carraway describing Jay Gatsby’s smile.

There are people whose high intensity smiles are their trademark. Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, Julia Roberts, Miss America runners-up (the winner always cries in faux disbelief), the Cheshire cat.

According to parapsychologist (there’s a concept!) Gary Schwartz and his colleagues, voluntary smiles are on average ten times bigger than spontaneous smiles. So although a smile may be a mile wide, it may be only a millimeter deep. This week I went through the ritual humiliation of having my eyes tested. “I want you to rest your chin here and tell me what you see,” says the eye wallah. “ASBF!” I exclaim triumphantly. “Now?” “DBLT!” Still triumphant. “What about this?” “B….er…looks like F – no P! Its P…and could be…. Now its the eye doctor’s turn to be triumphant. He give me a smile like the curve of a knife.

There are air hostess smiles, dental nurse smiles, politician’s smiles and undertaker’s smiles.

Voluntary smiles – such as servers are expected to generate – should be large. Their point is to be seen. If you want someone’s approval, a smile is as good a place to start as any. Getting the size of the smile right is a delicate calculation. Psychologists call this the ingratiator’s dilemma: how do you create a positive impression without giving the impression that you are wanting to create a positive impression?

Smile timing is important too. How long should you smile and when is it time for the smile to disappear?

What about smiles that appear attentive but are really merely sentinels behind which the wearer is cultivating their own thoughts. These smiles are deployed by those who are emotionally absent.

One of the most arduous things about my grilling life is learning how to smile appropriately.

There is the “Welcome I am your server….yadayada…” smile. Then there is the “Of course I will get you more bread/butter/ice smile. Then there is the cancer patient laughing at the doctor’s joke smile that you give a patron who left you with a paltry tip.

This week I mentally compiled an entire glossary of smiles. It was Lobster Week at the resto. For a ridiculously low prix fixe, diners were given mussels, lobster, chicken, sausage, corn on the cob, Red bliss potatoes and peach pie.

As I carefully placed the dishes in front of a couple, the woman gave me a smile that was not really a smile so much as a tool of inquiry. “Vot I must do vith zees” she queried. I mimed cracking gestures and spoke to her as we all speak to foreigners. “Take claw. Crack open. Eat this way. Delicious. Me gusta. I bring finger bowls” I explained. (“Me gusta” is the go-to Spanish phrase which should be used in all tricky situations.) I tried to give her a trustworthy smile. Her partner looked at me with facial disinterest. If smiles are indeed interpersonal velcro, this one wasn’t it. Mostly a server is rewarded with a smile that is like a half-opened tin can. Sometimes the smile can be warm as a Tuscan sun shimmering across a valley of vines. Occasionally we are treated to a formidable smile, which displays the teeth and the whole personality. Once I was given the sort of smile memories are not made of as much as repaired by.

I have to report that the most insulting smile you can give a server is one that is flashed like a torn photograph. This is especially effective when the wife doesn’t bother to look up at you while you are (pretend) smiling and thanking them. Great Spirit, grant that I may not criticize my customer until I have walked a mile in her Christian Louboutins.

The buffet of entertainment in New York is, these days, above my means. Recently a friend went to see the Rolling Stones. The tickets were $300.

The only way you don’t spend money in the US is if you stay in bed. Going to New York or even Philadelphia involves mucho dinero.

I long ago resolved only to go and see people who are likely to shuffle off this mortal coil sooner rather than later. (Note to self: must save up for tickets for Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.)

But last night, by happy chance, a chum and I were able to go to see The Great Gatsby.

The cocktail sherpa and the food porter.

He came to collect me in Miss Ross, as we call his car. We were anxious not to be late, but we needn’t have bothered. There were the obligatory seventeen forthcoming attractions. We sat in a near deserted cinema while our fellow movie-goers were tucking into boxes of popcorn the size of telephone booths.”We could have had an appetizer”, groaned Tom aggrievedly. Later “We could have had an entree!”

And still later “We could have had dessert!”

Finally the extravaganza commenced. I winced immediately. Are movies these days made for the hearing impaired? Why, when Daisy ripped off her necklace the sound of the pearls rolling over the parquet were like ballbearings on a bathroom floor.

For what my budgie-seed opinion is worth, Luhrmann’s interpretation of this great story set in the Jazz Age with its Shakespearean themes – impossible love, incorruptible dreams etc etc – was reduced to a brash 100% singing 100% dancing extravaganza in a heaving sea of champagne.

Tennis courts of Tiffany, tons of dazzle, a giddy torrent of feathers and flim-flam, but with all the depth and charisma as the enamel on a tin tray.

I am rather keen on Scott Fitzgerald and didn’t care for the liberties Luhrmann takes with the book.

Even the fact that Nick Carraway is supposed to be a poor cousin, but somehow can afford several servants and expensive psychotherapy annoyed me. But then maybe that’s just me being Miss Crankypants.

Why, we had to wait for half an hour before DiCaprio even made an appearance – and how exaggeratedly theatrical it was. Strings swelling to Rhapsody in Blue…blinking harbour lights in the distance and so forth.

Like all movies that are jammed with special effects – the 3D made me feel slightly bilious. As endless as Gotterdammerung, it was the kind of spectacle that almost made your eyes want to throw up.

Baz Lurhrmann needed someone to tell him ‘Enough! STOP already!’. Being cool is sometimes as effective as being hysterical but it’s less noisy.

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D…JZ…Mr Beyoncé….(sic).

What happened to being authentic to the time period?

What’s next? Schindler’s List with a rap music soundtrack.

Listen here Adolf…whattcha gonna do….here’s an idea baby…World War 2!

When Mia Farrow played Daisy, in the 1974 version, Robert Redford’s enchantment/fixation with her seemed more plausible. Miss Mulligan I am afraid, has a pretty face but all the acting skills of a wet sock. She’s not capable of igniting a cigarette, let alone a life-long passion.

(Actually it was more a desire for another possession, rather than love, if you ask me, but maybe I’ve just been watching too much Dr Phil.)

She either looked vaguely agonised or vaguely….well vague. Tobey Maguire, as the narrator, had the fresh unspoiled look of a slightly inebriated undergraduate, most of the time. It was his job to carry the movie. Even he looked exhausted by the end of it.

Leonardo diCaprio was predictably delicious in a series of ice-cream coloured suits, but it seemed to me that he was trying desperately hard to play Gatsby like Robert Reford playing Gatsby. He used the term ‘old sport’ at least a hundred times. Each time was more cringe-worthy than the last.

Auld Spaut. Erld Spert. Owl Spowt…etc etc.

As for the casting of Meyer Wolfsheim as a sinister Gupta – sorry I really can’t keep up – what is the politically correct term?- was downright offensive and if anything, another form of racial stereotyping.

Joel Edgerton as Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s thuggish husband, had curious triangular shaped eyes and bulging cheeks -possibly too much Perlane?

He looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.

His mistress Myrtle wasn’t intriguing enough and his passion for her not believable. I recalled Karen Black playing a smouldering Myrtle and how when she said ‘he makes me feel as though tiny fishes are swimming in my veins’ you tingled right along with her.

In the end Gatsby is a novel about the excesses of an era, the last fling of the dragon’s tail.

While I deeply admired the hurricane of Tiffany jewels, the mansions (large enough to house the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir) the Birnam Wood of peonies, and the intricate topiary in those endless emerald gardens, I left the theatre feeling as though I had overdosed on sequins and Moet.

Perhaps I have finally turned the corner.

I could hardly wait to get home and steam mop the kitchen floor – the new normal for me.