The Great Gatsby – Book Vs. Film(s)

Table of contents:

Introduction……………………………………………………………………2

The great novel of the American fiction: The Great Gatsby…………………4

Scott Francis Fitzgerald – the man, the writer, the character …………8

About the period: the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age ……………18

Real life and fiction in The Great Gatsby ……………………………23

Main themes of the book……………………………………………..27

The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s……………….27

The Hollowness of the Upper Class……………………………..28

Motifs and Symbols…………………………..………………….29

Zelda or The Last Flapper……………………………………………………32

The Great Gatsby on the big screen……………………………………..…35

The 1974 film ……………………………………………………..…37

The Great Gatsby in 2013 cinematography …………………………45

Critics and reviews on the films……………………………………..49

Conclusions…………………………………………………………………..52

Appendix……………………………………………………………………..56

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………63

Introduction

We all have dreams; we do our best to fulfill them. The continuous pursuit of happiness and achievements defines all men. It is inscribed in our genetic code; it is the engine that drives us to accomplish something great.

We set a goal for ourselves and we do everything to make it happen only to find out that, once achieved, we haven’t find happiness. It is the human nature to always aspire for something more, something better. This is the universal truth, applicable for everyone. Perhaps this is the main reason why we find ourselves in Jay Gatsby, why we can relate to the character and even empathize with him.

There are books that once you have read remain etched in your mind and in your soul. There are films that once seen you stick to the retina and we can forget about them. When you are referring to such an impressive story – both printed on paper and imprinted on film – then you can say that you lived an exceptional moment just by reading or seeing it.

The Great Gatsby is such a story. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, written in a nonchalant style, spawned a new epic style in the contemporary American literature. It is difficult to summarize in a few words the subject of this novel; it is a story of unfulfilled love, lavish parties, superficiality and frivolity. It is a novel in which every character has its own story; each one is chasing an ideal represented either by money or love.

The action of the novel is placed on the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age (a term Fitzgerald coined) and it captures brilliantly the American dream in a time when it had descended into decadence or even died (a very contemporary issue even today).

Often described as a ruthless portrait of society in which the author lived, The Great Gatsby is a novel of triumph and tragedy which focuses on the story of the man who rises in the society by his own forces, only to discover that his goal once achieved does not bring happiness. The author also proclaims, through his novel, the dead of the American Dream. Wealth, privilege, and the lack of humanity that those aspects create – those are, in Fitzgerald’s opinion, the causes for the destruction of the American Dream. The main culprit in the dream's death is money. Hope and success becomes easily entangled with money, their positions in the American Dream are replaced with materialism. Part of Fitzgerald's charm in The Great Gatsby, in fact, is his ability to encapsulate the mood of a generation during a politically and socially crucial and chaotic period of American history. In a very unique style Fitzgerald's novel draws an accurate picture of the world; the writer is able to analyze the society of which he was also a part, in a way detaching somehow from it. Not only he captures a snapshot of middle- and upper-class American life in the 1920s, but also, through his characters, conveys a series of criticisms.

Such a well-crafted work was adapted for the big screen several times. In 1926 the first silent movie was made after the novel, other four attempts were made since then.

Critics state that Fitzgerald’s intensely personal manner of a story teller cannot be reproduced on camera. Still, the 1974 film – directed by Jack Clayton, on a script by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Robert Redford (Jay Gatsby), Mia Farrow (Daisy Buchanan), Sam Waterson (Nick Carraway) and Bruce Dern (Tom Buchanan) – also became a landmark in the American cinematography, winning several prestigious awards and with a huge success at the box office. Later in this paper we will detail aspects of the film and how the director and the actors gave life to the story imagined by Fitzgerald.

This paper aims to make a comparison between the two – book versus film(s). Moreover we propose an analysis of the latest version of the film, living proof of the contemporarily of Fitzgerald’s themes.

The 2013 movie The Great Gatsby, directed by Baz Luhrmann, based on a script by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, features an outstanding cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Jay Gatsby), Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway), Carrey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan), Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan). We intend to conduct a comparative analysis between the 1974 version and the 2013, without neglecting the original written story.

Also, we will analyze the play Zelda or The Last Flapper, by William Luce, inspired the writer's wife biography, the woman who had a major impact on Fitzgerald's work.

While The Great Gatsby is a highly specific portrait of American society during the Roaring Twenties, its story is also one that has been told hundreds of times, and is perhaps as old as America itself: a man claws his way from rags to riches, only to find that his wealth cannot afford him the privileges enjoyed by those born into the upper class.

The Great Gatsby is, if we take away the specific details of the period, a timeless story; is a parable that teaches us to choose carefully which dreams to pursue and to consider just how far we have to go in order to achieve them.

2. The great novel of the American fiction: The Great Gatsby

On September 1999 The New York Times published an article entitled Books of the Century (referring, of course to the 20th century), based on readers opinions and cast of votes for best English-language novels. Ulysses by James Joyce ranked first, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald second. The article noted that: „Fitzgerald's novel illustrates a particular episode of the performance of the American civilization. And it does it with irony, pathos and charm. The Great Gatsby is the captivating, mystical and bright story of the Jazz Age.”

Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is a classic piece of American fiction. It is a novel of triumph and tragedy, noted for the remarkable way Fitzgerald captured a cross-section of American society.

A particular trade of Fitzgerald’s writing is the fact that a secondary character – Nick Carraway (alter ergo of the author maybe?) is the narrator of the story; all events are filtered through his consciousness. For the most part, he plays only a peripheral role in the events of the novel; he prefers to remain a passive observer. The novel begins with Nick’s thoughts and his remembering of his father’s words: “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”. It is a sort of warning for the readers not to be haste to judge the characters as they enter the “scene”.

Although the title of the novel suggests that the main character is Gatsby, the author takes his time in introducing him to the readers. On the contrary, Fitzgerald brings his character into light only after he creates a propitious framework for him. It thus creates an aura of mystery around Gatsby, which is removed throughout the novel, both by him and by the other characters.

Nick Carraway, our storyteller, moves to New York and rents a house in West Egg. He begins attending the Buchanan family who live in the posh Long Island district of East Egg. Nick resides in nearby West Egg, a less fashionable area looked down upon by those who live in East Egg. West Egg is home to the nouveau riche people who lack established social connections, and tend to vulgarly flaunt their wealth. Like Nick, Tom Buchanan graduated from Yale, and comes from a privileged Midwestern family and he is married to Daisy, Nick’s cousin. Tom is a former rugby player who regrets the times when playing in New Haven. He is deeply unhappy with his life and seeks solace in affair with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a mechanic, George. In turn, Daisy is aware of her husband's affairs, but also seems too bored to react.

In the newly-formed circle of acquaintances, Carraway hears about Gatsby – a very wealthy man – and realizes that he is his neighbor, who gives large party almost every night. He was invited to such a party and he notes that people are not invited by Gatsby, but reached, through a combination of circumstances, at his home. Nick makes a blunder and, not knowing Gatsby, talks about him in his presence, but the host is gentle and forgives his rudeness.

Around the main character there are many suspicions: it is believed that he is the nephew or the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm, that once he killed someone, that he was educated at Oxford or that he makes bootlegging.

As he knows him better, Carraway observes that Gatsby shows an inclination towards him, not exactly unmotivated. Gatsby had a relationship with Daisy in the past and he wanted to meet again with her through Nick. Carraway facilitates their reunion and two relive their love story in a whole other set of coordinates.

The Buchanans are invited to soirees in Gatsby's house, thus Tom is also attracted to the personality and the hidden past of tycoon. Inevitably, the truth comes out, has there is a direct confrontation between Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, both fighting for Daisy, in a memorable scene. Tom is the winner of this dispute as he finds out and reveals, after investigation, the source of wealth Jay Gatsby – smuggling alcohol. Daisy is taken by surprise by her husband’s the discovery and gives up her old love very easily.

In order for Daisy and Gatsby to resolve doubts, Tom proposes them to return together in West Egg in Jay's car. Daisy is being nervous; she is driving reckless, runs over and kills her husband's mistress, Myrtle. Believing that Gatsby brutally killed Myrtle, Tom reveals to George Wilson the name of the alleged murderer. Distraught and deeply marked by the death of his wife, George shoots Gatsby while he was in the pool, then commits suicide.

Nick arranges his friend’s burial. Very few people attend Gatsby's funeral; each of his acquaintances evade, not wanting their names to be associated with the defunct. One last character enters the scene: Henry C. Gatz – Gatsby’s father. Now we find out that Gatsby’s real name was James (Jimmy) Gatz and that his life ambition was to improve himself, to rise in the society, to accomplish something more.

Gatsby’s past is revealed along the way, as he came into the scene so his true origin is brought to the surface. He makes the first mentions, confessing to Carraway that, as a teenager, he traveled the sea with Dan Cody. After 5 years of wandering, he died, but this time had good use for Gatsby. Due to the school of life learned alongside, he managed to survive, although he had no resources or knowledge. During this period he met Daisy, but had to go to war and fought in France. After the war, he could not immediately return to America, Daisy waited no more for him and she married Tom. Gatsby has never forgotten her, he returned to the States, he sought her, but it was too late, Daisy was on the wedding voyage. After years of illegal trades and having amassed a considerable fortune, he managed to meet her again, but fate was against him.

This is, in short, the story of the novel. In order to have a comprehensive understanding we must analyze the unfolding of the action, the building of to the surface. He makes the first mentions, confessing to Carraway that, as a teenager, he traveled the sea with Dan Cody. After 5 years of wandering, he died, but this time had good use for Gatsby. Due to the school of life learned alongside, he managed to survive, although he had no resources or knowledge. During this period he met Daisy, but had to go to war and fought in France. After the war, he could not immediately return to America, Daisy waited no more for him and she married Tom. Gatsby has never forgotten her, he returned to the States, he sought her, but it was too late, Daisy was on the wedding voyage. After years of illegal trades and having amassed a considerable fortune, he managed to meet her again, but fate was against him.

This is, in short, the story of the novel. In order to have a comprehensive understanding we must analyze the unfolding of the action, the building of the characters and, last but not least, the main themes of the book.

Nevertheless, we can not start a conclusive analysis of the novel without sketching the historical context in which it was written and without making a portrait of the man who wrote it: F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Scott Francis Fitzgerald – the man, the writer, the character

All writers draw on personal experiences and insight in creating their works. When it come to Fitzgerald sometimes is difficult to separate where fiction ended and real life began. His life and the life of those close to him was his main inspiration. He was the chronicler of his and we cannot separate him and his work from it. Fitzgerald's life (and the lives of his characters) echoed the national mood—boldly romantic before 1920, excessive and exuberant in the 1920s, sober and reflective in the 1930s. Often criticized for this, he was renowned for borrowing scenes, settings and characters from real life. This is why we will further speak about F. Scott Fitzgerald – the man, the writer and… the character.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota to an upper middle class Irish Catholic family. He spent his childhood in Buffalo, New York where he attended two catholic schools. From an early age young Scott has showed a particular interest in literature – inclination that his mother encourages.

Fitzgerald grew up with the manners, values, standards, and culture of the late nineteenth century. The world of his boyhood was a time of great American fortunes and enormous inequalities.  Workers were wage slaves; there were no social security benefits, and pensions were rare.  Women were denied career opportunities, as well as the vote until 1920.  Low taxes and the availability of servants enabled the upper-middle and upper classes to live very well. 

In 1908, after his father looses his job, the family returns to Minnesota and Fitzgerald goes to St. Paul Academy. The family of four (Edward Fitzgerald and Mary "Mollie”, Scott and his sister Annabel) lived comfortably on Mollie Fitzgerald’s income of $5,000 or $6,000 a year from her inheritance. At 13 he publishes in the school newspaper his first piece of writing: a detective story – The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage. At 15 he goes to Hackensack, New Jersey and attends the Newman School, a prestigious Catholic preparatory school. There he met Father Sigourney Fay, who noticed his incipient talent with the written word and encouraged him to pursue his literary ambitions.

After graduating from the Newman School in 1913, Fitzgerald enters Princeton University with the Class of 1917; it is clear for him now that we will pursue a career in writing. He soon meets men who will remain lifelong friends and influences, including the writers Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. In his sophomore year Fitzgerald increases his involvement in Princeton's literary scene, with contributions to the Princeton Tiger and the Triangle Club. In 1915 Fitzgerald meets Ginevra King, his first serious love interest and a major influence on several female characters in his later fiction. The affair ends rather quickly and writing became his main interest at the expense of his coursework; he was placed on academic probation, and in 1917 he dropped out of school to join the U.S. Army. Afraid that he might die in World War I with his literary dreams unfulfilled, in the weeks before reporting to duty Fitzgerald hastily wrote a novel called The Romantic Egotist. Although the publisher Charles Scribner's Sons rejected the novel, the reviewer noted its originality and encouraged Fitzgerald to submit more work in the future – this will be the beginning of a long professional and personal relationship between the two men.

As a second lieutenant in the infantry Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan outside of Montgomery, Alabama. Here he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge and the "golden girl," in Fitzgerald's terms, of Montgomery youth society. It will be a life-changing experience.

In 1918, before Fitzgerald was ever deployed, the war ended. The writer decides to move to New York City hoping to launch a career in advertising lucrative enough to convince Zelda to marry him. He worked for the Barron Collier advertising agency, living in a single room at 200 Claremont Avenue. Although Zelda first accepted his marriage proposal she breaks off the engagement not convinced that he will be able to support a family.

Returned to his parents' house in St. Paul, Fitzgerald revises The Romantic Egoist, recast as This Side of Paradise, about the post First World War flapper generation. The revised novel was accepted by Scribner's and published on March 26, 1920, and became one of the most popular books of the year. Zelda and Scott resumed their engagement and were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral a week after the novel was released. In May 1921, the young couple departs for their first trip to Europe; they spend three months in England, France and Italy before returning to the Unites States. Their only child, a daughter named Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, was born on October 26, 1921.

Paris in the 1920s proved the most influential decade of Fitzgerald's development. Fitzgerald made several excursions to Europe, mostly Paris and the French Riviera, and became friends with many members of the American expatriate community in Paris. He met Ernest Hemingway and begun a vigorous friendship with him despite the fact that he did not get on well with Zelda. Hemingway describes her as "insane" and claimed that she distracts her husband from his work.

In this period Fitzgerald, like most writers at the time, tries to supplement his income by writing short stories for such magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire. Also, he sells his stories and novels to Hollywood studios. The short story Bernice Bobs Her Hair features the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on May 1, 1920.

Two year later, on May 1922, Fitzgerald’s second novel – The Beautiful and Damned is published. In October, the same year the family rents a house in Great Neck, Long Island and live there until April 1924. During their time in Long Island, F. Scott Fitzgerald produces a few short stories for magazines and one unsuccessful play. The couple's interactions with Long Island society provide the setting and mood for the novel germinating in Fitzgerald's head. The book, which will become Fitzgerald’s best known novel, will be printed in April 1925 under the name The Great Gatsby. The quintessential tale of the glory and tragedy of American aspiration won Fitzgerald great critical respect. The initial success of the book was limited, although in the more than 75 years since it has come to be regarded as a classic piece of American fiction.

By the time The Great Gatsby was published, the Fitzgeralds have moved to France – they will remain here the next seven years. In Paris they joined a growing community of American artists and writers drawn to France for its inexpensive cost of living, liberal sexual codes, great bars, numerous presses and magazines willing to publish them. Living cheaply in Paris, writers could sell their work to the growing numbers of magazines and publishers back in the U.S., which were hungry for new talent and willing to pay handsomely. In addition to Fitzgerald, Paris-based American writers who published during the 1920s included Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and the young Ernest Hemingway, about whom Fitzgerald wrote to his editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribners, "I'd look him up right away. He's the real thing." Fitzgerald and Hemingway had a complicated relationship that started in friendship, progressed to rivalry and ended in bitter resentment. Zelda and Hemingway hated each other, and both criticized Scott for hanging out with the other.

Because of the opulent lifestyle, that he and Zelda adopted as New York celebrities as well as the bills from Zelda's medical care when they came, Fitzgerald was constantly in financial trouble and often required loans from his literary agent, Harold Ober, and his editor at Scribner's, Maxwell Perkins. When Ober decided not to continue advancing money to him, the author severed ties with his longtime friend and agent. (Fitzgerald offered a good-hearted and apologetic tribute to this support in the late short story Financing Finnegan.)

Fitzgerald's writing brought in a solid income, but the couple's lifestyle took a toll. They drank heavily—him more than her—and fought viciously. Both flirted with other people. Zelda was also creative, pursuing both dance and writing, but her unique personality was starting to seem more unbalanced than charming. The couple—like the rest of the nation—was living on borrowed time. In October 1929 the stock market crashed, triggering the Great Depression. Six months later, Zelda suffered her first nervous breakdown and spends much of the next year hospitalized in various clinics in Switzerland. In November Fitzgerald publishes the short story One Trip Abroad, about an American couple who fall apart in Europe.

Things would never be so good again, for Fitzgerald or for his characters. He returns to United States on September 1931. The Saturday Evening Post publishes the stories Babylon Revisited and Emotional Bankruptcy, both of which dwell on characters reflecting on the aftermath of the Crash. In Babylon Revisited, a newly-sober American expatriate named Charlie navigates the streets of Paris, reflecting on the good times of just a few years earlier, and thinks, "I spoiled this city for myself. I didn't realize it, but the days came along one after another, and then two years were gone, and everything was gone, and I was gone."

Fitzgerald began working on his fourth novel during the late 1920s but was sidetracked by financial difficulties that necessitated his writing commercial short stories and by Zelda’s illness. Her emotional health remained fragile for the rest of her life. In 1932, she was hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland. Fitzgerald rented the "La Paix" estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland to work on his latest book, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising young psychiatrist who falls in love with and marries Nicole Warren, one of his patients. The book went through many versions, the first of which was to be a story of matricide. Some critics have seen the book as a thinly-veiled autobiographical novel recounting Fitzgerald's problems with his wife, the corrosive effects of wealth and a decadent lifestyle, his own egoism and self-confidence, and his continuing alcoholism. Indeed, Fitzgerald was extremely protective of his "material" (their life together). When Zelda wrote and sent to Scribner's her own fictional version of their lives in Europe, Save Me the Waltz, Fitzgerald was angry and was able to make some changes prior to the novel's publication, and convince her doctors to keep her from writing any more about what he called his "material," which included their relationship.

His book was finally published in 1934 as Tender Is the Night. Critics who had waited nine years for the follow-up to The Great Gatsby had mixed opinions about the novel. Most were thrown off by its three-part structure and many felt that Fitzgerald had not lived up to their expectations. The novel did not sell well upon publication, but like the earlier Gatsby, the book's reputation has since risen significantly.

In February 1936, the first of Fitzgerald's three-part autobiographical essay The Crack-Up, detailing his own mental breakdown, appears in Esquire magazine. The third and final part runs in April, the same month that Zelda is committed to Highland Hospital mental asylum in Asheville, North Carolina. She lives there, on and off, for the rest of her life.

Fitzgerald moves to Hollywood in 1937, after signing a six-month contract from Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Although he reportedly found movie work degrading, Fitzgerald was once again in dire financial straits, and spent the second half of the 1930s in Hollywood, working on commercial short stories, scripts for MGM (including some unfilmed work on Gone with the Wind), and his fifth and final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon. Published posthumously as The Last Tycoon, it was based on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg. Among his other film projects was Madame Curie, for which he received no credit. In 1939, MGM ended the contract, and Fitzgerald became a freelance screenwriter. However, during all this, Fitzgerald's alcoholic tendencies still remained, and conflict with Zelda surfaced. Fitzgerald and Zelda became estranged; she continued living in mental institutions on the East Coast, while he lived with his lover Sheilah Graham, the gossip columnist, in Hollywood. From 1939 until his death in 1940, Fitzgerald mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby in a sequence of 17 short stories, later collected as The Pat Hobby Stories which were published in The Esquire and appeared from January 1940 to July 1941.

On December 21, 1940 F. Scott Fitzgerald dies of a heart attack at Sheilah Graham's Hollywood, California apartment. He is buried in Rockville, Maryland, where his father was born. Among the attendants at a visitation held at a funeral home was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured "the poor son-of-a-bitch," a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. His body was transported to Maryland, where his funeral was attended by twenty or thirty people in Bethesda; among the attendants were his only child, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith (then age 19), and his editor, Maxwell Perkins. Fitzgerald was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery. Zelda died in 1948, in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Scottie Smith worked to overturn the Archdiocese of Baltimore's ruling that Fitzgerald died a non-practicing Catholic, so that he could be buried at the Roman Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery where his father's family was interred; this involved "re-Catholicizing" Fitzgerald after his death. Both of the Fitzgeralds' remains were moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's Cemetery, in Rockville, Maryland, in 1975.

Fitzgerald died at age 44, before he could complete The Love of the Last Tycoon. His manuscript, which included extensive notes for the unwritten part of the novel's story, was edited by his friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson, and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. In 1994 the book was reissued under the original title The Love of the Last Tycoon, which is now agreed to have been Fitzgerald's preferred title.

Despite his relatively short life F. Scott Fitzgerald was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, essays and plays. During his lifetime, Fitzgerald completed four novels (a fifth was published posthumously) and about 160 stories. He was also one of the most influential members of a group known as the Lost Generation.

But such a rich and fascinating life could not be ignored; more that an author Fitzgerald has become a character for others. The man who had always used his own life as inspiration had inspired other writers.

A musical about the lives of Fitzgerald and wife Zelda Fitzgerald was composed by Frank Wildhorn entitled Waiting for the Moon, formerly known as Zelda, followed by Scott & Zelda: the Other Side of Paradise. The musical shows their lives from when they first met, through Fitzgerald's career, their lives together (the good and bad), to both of their deaths. The musical made its world premiere at the Lenape Regional Performing Arts Center in a production that ran from July 20, 2005 through July 31, 2005. It starred Broadway veteran actors Jarrod Emick as Fitzgerald and Lauren Kennedy as Zelda.

The Japanese Takarazuka Revue has also created a musical adaptation of Fitzgerald's life. Entitled The Last Party: S. Fitzgerald's Last Day, it was produced in 2004 and 2006. Yuhi Oozora and Yūga Yamato starred as Fitzgerald, while Zelda was played by Kanami Ayano and Rui Shijou.

The Great Gatsby Musical opened at the Kings Head Theatre, London, on August 7, 2012, to fairly modest critical acclaim. A Ruby In The Dust production, it is adapted by Joe Evans and Linnie Reedman with music and lyrics by Joe Evans, directed by Linnie Reedman, with Matilda Sturridge as Daisy Buchanan.

Simon Levy's stage adaptation, the only one authorized and granted exclusive rights by the Fitzgerald Estate, had its world premiere at The Guthrie Theater to commemorate the opening of its new theatre in July 2006, directed by David Esbjornson. It was subsequently produced by Seattle Repertory Theatre. In 2012 a revised/reworked version was produced at Arizona Theatre Company and Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, Canada.

Elevator Repair Service, an experimental theater group, produced a theater version of The Great Gatsby, entitled Gatz. It is set in an office and read and performed by actor Scott Shepherd along with a cast of 12 other actors.

Fitzgerald was portrayed by the actor Malcolm Gets in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Others include the TV movies Zelda (1993, with Timothy Hutton), F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1976, with Jason Miller), and F. Scott Fitzgerald and 'The Last of the Belles' (1974, with Richard Chamberlain). A film based on Fitzgerald and Zelda's relationship called The Beautiful and the Damned directed by John Curran was made in 2011 staring Keira Knightly as Zelda.

The last years of Fitzgerald and his affair with Sheilah Graham, the Hollywood gossip columnist, was the theme of the movie Beloved Infidel (1959). The film depicts Fitzgerald (played by Gregory Peck) during his final years as a Hollywood scenarist and his relationship with Ms. Graham (played by Deborah Kerr), with whom he had a years-long affair, while his wife, Zelda, was institutionalized.

Another film, Last Call (2002) (Jeremy Irons plays Fitzgerald) describes the relationship with Frances Kroll (Neve Campbell) during his last two years of life. The film was based on the memoir of Frances Kroll Ring, titled Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald (1985), that records her experience as secretary to Fitzgerald for the last 20 months of his life.

The standard biographies of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are Arthur Mizener's The Far Side of Paradise (1951, 1965) and Matthew Bruccoli's Some Sort of Epic Grandeur (1981).

Fitzgerald's letters have also been published in various editions such as Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, ed. Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Banks (2002); Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Matthew Bruccoli and Margaret Duggan (1980), and F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, ed. Matthew Bruccoli (1994).

A collection of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's scrapbooks of photographs and reviews was compiled by Matthew Bruccoli and F. Scott and Zelda's daughter Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald (Appearing as Scottie Fitzgerald Smith) in a book The Romantic Egoists (1976).

Fitzgerald appears alongside Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway in the play Villa America by British playwright Crispin Whittell which premiered at Williamstown Theatre Festival (2007).

Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill appear briefly as Fitzgerald and Zelda in Woody Allen's 2011 feature film Midnight in Paris.

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald appear alongside Ernest Hemingway, Hadley Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound in the novel The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. The book Gatbys Girl written by Caroline Preston was fiction based on fact about Fitzgeralds relationship with first love Ginevra King.

The Scott Fitzgerald Play by Michael McGuire was originally published by the University of Missouri Press as a Breakthrough Book in 1988.

William Luce’s play Zelda, about Zelda Fitzgerald, premiered Off-Broadway in 1984 and starred Olga Bellin. Luce turned this play into The Last Flapper, which was performed in regional US theatres initially in 1987 by Piper Laurie, directed by Charles Nelson Reilly.

A ballet performance entitled The Great Gatsby, was staged at The Pittsburgh Ballet and premiered 25 April 1996.  Scenario and choreography by Bruce Wells; original music by Michael Moricz; scenery and costume design by Peter Farmer.

The novel was converted even into an opera that premiered at The Metropolitan Opera, on 20 December 1999.  Words and music by John Harbison, song lyrics by Murray Horwitz. The libretto has been published by G. Schirmer Incorporated, New York in 1999.

Gatsby's story floated on the airwaves. In October 2008, the BBC World Service commissioned and broadcast an abridged 10-part reading of the story, read from the view of Nick Carraway by Trevor White. Six years later, in May 2012, BBC Radio 4 broadcasted The Great Gatsby, a Classic Serial dramatization by Robert Forrest.

Regarding the music related to the novel: The band Gatsby's American Dream is named after the book. In April 2010, the folk duo Reg & Phil released a song entitled "Daisy Buchanan" on their self-titled album. The song, told by an anonymous narrator, directly addresses the novel's title character. Ballad group 2AM released an EP in 2012 titled 'F.Scott Fitzgerald's Way of Love', which draws inspiration from and narrates the story of Jay Gatsby's love for Daisy.

The Great Gatsby also entered the virtual world: in 2010 a casual Hidden Object game called Classic Adventures: The Great Gatsby was released by Oberon Media. As a tribute to old NES games, developer Charlie Hoey and editor Pete Smith created an 8-bit version of The Great Gatsby that is playable online. Classic Adventures: The Great Gatsby is a 2010 PC game roughly based on the novel It was released for iPad in 2012.

2.2 About the period: the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age

The 1920s have many names in America: the Roaring Twenties, the Boom, the Jazz Age (the name Fitzgerald himself coined). It was a period of wild economic prosperity, cultural flowering and a shaking up of social mores.

  Fitzgerald’s view of the Twenties was serious and complex, for he recognized the glamour as well as the waste, the charm as well as the self-destruction. He wrote in Echoes of the Jazz Age (1931), his post-mortem for the decade he named, that “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.”

     The decade of the Twenties was known as the Boom because of general prosperity and ebullience despite the 1921 recession and the seemingly easy money to be made in stock-market speculation. Two major achievements of the reform impulse were the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments Prohibition and votes for women both of which were ratified by 1920. The Volstead Act, which implemented the Eighteenth Amendment by prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States, had powerful social and economic consequences not because it was enforced, but because it was unenforceable.  Prohibition changed American drinking habits and manners; it droved America's drinking population into speakeasies, underground clubs where people could enjoy their booze and the newly popular jazz music. Sexual mores loosened. Youth-centric culture flourished. Women bobbed their hair (as in Fitzgerald's story Bernice Bobs Her Hair) and traded floor-length skirts for the flapper dresses that live on today as Halloween costumes. The Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote, and (probably more important to Fitzgerald's fiction) the speakeasies were the first place in America where it became acceptable for a woman who wasn't a prostitute to drink and smoke in public. There were no class boundaries: rich and poor drank. Prohibition fostered the rise of organized crime as bootlegging (dealing in alcohol) became a major industry. Psychoanalysis became fashionable among the wealthy, which happily shed their inhibitions with Sigmund Freud's approval.

More than any other American decade the Twenties were a period of heroes and hero-worship, resulting from the defining American belief in individuality and the possibility of greatness.  In 1920s the class system was rigid, but Americans still believed that America was the land of opportunity.  The self-made man was a model.  Successful businessmen and moguls were heroes. Men like Charles A. Lindbergh, Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig were an inspiration to the common people.

   The 1920s dawned on an America ready for peace and prosperity. The evil of war had been defeated, and the next great threat in Europe was not yet visible on the horizon. A booming stock market contributed to a huge growth in consumer spending, as investors saw their wealth (on paper) soar. This infusion of new money brought with it a new morality for the young social set, one less concerned with the traditional values of past generations and more interested in individualism and modernism. Policy changes in the U.S. unwittingly encouraged this new culture.

The Twenties were the golden decade of American music.  The songs of the Twenties were by Irving Berlin; George and Ira Gershwin; Cole Porter; Rodgers and Hart; Jerome Kern; Vincent Youmans; DaSylva, Henderson and Brown; Ruby and Kalmar.  These composers and lyricists continued their work in the Thirties, but they were identified with the Twenties.  Lavish musical revues of the Ziegfeld Follies genre typified Broadway productions.  The black jazz giants emerged:  King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Bessie Smith.  Paul Whiteman’s orchestra performed white jazz with the legendary Bix Beiderbecke on cornet. 

     The Twenties generated the second and greater American literary renaissance after the nineteenth-century New England Renaissance.  These are the writers some of whom began earlier who were published during that miraculous decade: fiction writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Ring Lardner, Dashiell Hammett, Gertrude Stein, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, James Gould Cozzens; poets T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, E. E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens.  

The innovations in literature and the other arts were connected with the expatriation tropism that made Paris seem an American creative colony during les Annees Vingt.  American writers and artists went to France during the Twenties because they could live affordably there, drink there, satisfy sexual proclivities there, and get published there by the little magazines and small presses or start their own journals and imprints.  The rate of exchange was crucial to this migration.  The franc fluctuated from fifteen to thirty-five to the dollar; a meal with wine cost four or five francs.  Prohibition has been exaggerated as an impetus for expatriation.  Bootleg booze was readily available in the States, but some Americans who could afford to leave home proclaimed that they could not tolerate living in a society that interfered with their freedom to drink. Prohibition has been exaggerated as an impetus for expatriation.  Bootleg booze was readily available in the States, but some Americans who could afford to leave home proclaimed that they could not tolerate living in a society that interfered with their freedom to drink.

     Under the influence of Sigmund Freud men and women shed their repressions and inhibitions.  Psychoanalysis became fashionable among the affluent.  The general loosening of moral and sexual restrictions liberated American women, whose activities had been more circumscribed by custom.  Corsets were abandoned; skirts rose; the double standard eroded as birth-control information became available.  Women gained more educational opportunities and held some jobs that were previously reserved for men.  Nonetheless, the best colleges and universities remained sexually segregated, and women were blocked from executive positions.  The freedoms of the Twenties which began during the war contended against entrenched Puritanism.  Censorship of printed matter was usual. 

Americans became mobile, and the automobile was the most powerful agent of social change. The Twenties brought a vast expansion in what became known as the media.  The mass-circulation slick-paper magazines (The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Liberty, Cosmopolitan) paid Fitzgerald and other popular writers very well.

The Twenties brought the Second Industrial Revolution as the production of American consumer goods was driven by advertising.  Radio was the most effective means of reaching prospective customers.  Radio networks emerged in the Twenties.  KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcast the presidential-election returns for the first time in 1920 as Harding and Coolidge defeated Cox and Roosevelt; by 1925 there were fifty million radio listeners.

 It was also the defining era of Fitzgerald's life as a writer. He reached the peak of his fame with the 1925 publication of The Great Gatsby, a book that perfectly captured the era's moods and styles. The fun lasted for ten years and then, as Fitzgerald so eloquently put it, "leaped to a spectacular death in October 1929." Two years after the crash Fitzgerald eulogized the period in an essay entitled Echoes of the Jazz Age, writing that "the present writer already looks back to it with nostalgia. It bore him up, flattered him and gave him more money than he had dreamed of, simply for telling people that he felt as they did, that something had to be done with all the nervous energy stored up and unexpended in the War."

Twenties gave Fitzgerald the settings for his greatest works. All of his novels are set in locations where Fitzgerald himself lived for a substantial period of time. From 1920 to 1921, he and Zelda lived in New York City, which became the setting for the 1922 novel The Beautiful and Damned. Following that book's publication, the couple and their baby daughter Frances Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald rented a house in Great Neck, Long Island; the town had no idea that it would soon host one of the most famous fictional parties in literary history as it served as scenery for West Egg in The Great Gatsby. In return, Fitzgerald immortalized the period and atmosphere of those years as no one else did.

2.3 Real life and fiction in The Great Gatsby

It is common knowledge that authors write most effectively about what they know; all great fiction is, to more or less degree, autobiographical. More than most other writers, Fitzgerald drew upon his own feelings and experiences for his novels and short stories.  As he explained in his 1933 essay One Hundred False Starts: “Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves that’s the truth.  We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives experiences so great and moving that it doesn’t seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories each time in a new disguise maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.”

   Yet Fitzgerald’s fiction was never just thinly-disguised autobiography; it was instead transmuted autobiography.  None of the protagonists of his novels (Amory Blaine, Anthony Patch, Jay Gatsby, Dick Diver, or Monroe Stahr) can be fully identified with Fitzgerald, though he clearly assigned certain of his own emotions and experiences to them.  In his best work, fictional elements provide artistic form and moral order that life rarely yields; autobiographical elements invest the work with an intensely “felt” quality, perhaps the most notable mark of Fitzgerald’s greatest writing.  Again and again he emphasized that his fiction had its origins in his feelings:  “Whether it’s something that happened twenty years ago or only yesterday, I must start out with an emotion one that’s close to me and that I can understand.”

Fitzgerald never wrote a novel with a key in which real people and events are slightly fictionalized, and much of the pleasure for readers comes through their ability to identify the prototypes for the characters and actions and to share what purports to be an insider’s view of them.  Fitzgerald drew upon his life, family, friends, and favorite locales for his novels and stories, but his purpose in doing so was not to expose real people and events but to recreate them in fictional forms capable of conveying truths as he saw them.

The Great Gatsby is not autobiography, but many of Fitzgerald's personal circumstances and experiences are reflected in it. Many of Fitzgerald's biographers, as well as Fitzgerald himself, noted that Fitzgerald lived his life with a kind of divided personality: the romantic who sought an exciting, glittering lifestyle, and the Midwesterner who still believed in traditional American values. These two very different aspects of Fitzgerald are reflected in Gatsby, the romantic dreamer, and Nick Carraway, the realist and voice of Midwestern integrity.

Many of Fitzgerald's experiences are incorporated into Jay Gatsby and his former self, Jimmy Gatz. Like Jimmy, Fitzgerald as a boy rejected the circumstances of his own birth. He sometimes fantasized that he was a foundling, that he really had been born into a family very different from his own–one of wealth and social standing (even royalty). Jimmy found his father to be an embarrassment; Fitzgerald had often been embarrassed by his eccentric mother.

Also like Gatsby, Fitzgerald had served as a lieutenant in World War I and had met the woman of his dreams, Zelda Sayre, while stationed in the South. Many similarities exist between Zelda of Montgomery, Alabama, and Daisy Fay of Louisville; like Daisy, Zelda was beautiful and popular, much pursued by the young officers stationed at the nearby army camp. Fitzgerald visited Zelda at her father's fine home, just as Gatsby spent time with Daisy in her father's beautiful house.

Zelda would not marry Fitzgerald until he had money and could support her, but Fitzgerald's experience with poor boys pursuing rich girls, a major element in the novel as Gatsby longs for Daisy, involved Fitzgerald's relationship while in college with another young woman, Ginevra King. She was from an enormously wealthy family in Chicago, and Fitzgerald's own family and lack of wealth made him unacceptable as a suitor. Fitzgerald biographers have written of an incident that occurred when Fitzgerald went to visit Ginevra at her family home and was treated coldly by her family: "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls," he reportedly was told, and their relationship ended. The same social class distinctions that existed between Ginevra and Fitzgerald are examined in detail in The Great Gatsby, and the rich upper class is condemned as being snobbish and amoral.

Finally, the novel is rich in its depiction of the Roaring Twenties as the era played out, especially in New York. Fitzgerald and Zelda lived in New York after their marriage, caught up in the frenetic, excessive lifestyle, spending money as fast, or faster, than Fitzgerald could earn it. The automobiles, music, fashions, occupations, wild parties, and gorgeous mansions detailed in the novel were part of their daily lives. (Fitzgerald himself named the era "The Jazz Age.") For a while, he and Zelda lived in a fine home in Great Neck, New York, on Long Island, their estate being a place very much like Gatsby's West Egg estate, the scene of his opulent parties where all manner of guests showed up.

Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy’s love.

Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.

The Great Gatsby is a work of fiction, but clearly it was born of Scott Fitzgerald's own life and many specific experiences. It is impossible to imagine that anyone else could have written it.

2.4 Themes, Motifs & Symbols

2.4.1 The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s

Disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess – this is highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole that Fitzgerald achieves through his novel. Even though, on the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman, the main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope.

Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals.

When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.

Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.

As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter 9), the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nick’s mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.

Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.

2.4.2 The Hollowness of the Upper Class

One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.

What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money’s ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisy’s window until four in the morning in Chapter 7 simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans’ bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.

2.4.3 Motifs and Symbols

Geography

Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West (including Midwestern and northern areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more traditional social values and ideals. Nick’s analysis in Chapter 9 of the story he has related reveals his sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the story is really one of the West, as it tells how people originally from west of the Appalachians (as all of the main characters are) react to the pace and style of life on the East Coast.

Weather

The weather in The Great Gatsby unfailingly matches the emotional and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion begins amid a pouring rain, proving awkward and melancholy; their love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out. Gatsby’s climactic confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer, under the scorching sun. Wilson kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in the air—a symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship with Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.

The Green Light

Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter 1 he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.

The Valley of Ashes

First introduced in Chapter 2, The Valley of Ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.

The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly. Instead, throughout the novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning because characters instill them with meaning. The connection between the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind. This lack of concrete significance contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. Thus, the eyes also come to represent the essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental process by which people invest objects with meaning. Nick explores these ideas in Chapter 8, when he imagines Gatsby’s final thoughts as a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.

3. Zelda or The Last Flapper

William Luce is an American writer specialized one-person plays. He has brought on stage famous historical characters (writers and artists) such as Emily Dickinson (The Belle of Amherst), Charlotte Brontë (Bronte), Lillian Hellman (Lillian), Karen Blixen (Lucifer's Child), John Barrymore (Barrymore).

Zelda or The Last Flapper was written in 1984 and it was presented for the first time, as a revised dramatic work, at the Burt Reynold’s Theater in Jupiter, Florida on the same year. The play formally opened at the Alley Theter in Huston, Texas, in September 1987 and starred actress Piper Lauri and was directed by Charles Nelson Reily.

William Luce wrote about Zelda’s life based on her letters and stories; this exciting play is the peremptory portrait of Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald and it reveals contradictions, mysteries of the woman who many say it was extraordinary.

As he confesses in the Preface of the play, Luce wants to separate Zelda the real person, from Zelda – the legend. “Zelda was possessed of a brilliant, schizophrenic mind. She was exciting, original, witty, talented, tormented. All the ingredients for the stage. And her life was not a tragedy. That is the public cliché, the legend, not the reality. Zelda found self-completeness in her final years. Even though she was confided to institutions, her dignity held, and there was a kind of heroism in her.”

The play reveals a very different Zelda that the one F. Scott Fitzgerald describes in his novel The Beautiful and the Damned as a symbol of the Jazz Age – the complete flapper, glamorous, vain, and selfish. Zelda played this “role” for a while but, as she writes in her autobiographical novel Save Me the Waltz, she struggled for identification apart from her husband, the genial writer.

Set in an insane asylum on the last day of Zelda's life – May 10, 1948 – the play unfolds as a hypnotic session. Zelda tells of her innocent rebellion as a southern belle, of her destructive marriage and of her mental disintegration. It is the story of a love that took everything and left her to live in oblivion in a mental sanatorium. Through the character we enter in a world where man and woman meet at an intellectual level and this will become unacceptable.

Zelda is the woman who broke every convention, the woman who loved boundless, the woman with multiple talents. It is a disturbing story that a character relives on the last day of her life; a story about genius, love, insanity. Ostensibly, Luce’s script provides a retrospect of Zelda Fitzgerald’s emotional roller-coaster life.

Diagnosed as schizophrenic near the age of 30, thereafter she lived in and out of mental institutions, which is where the audience finds her the day before she dies in a fire, aged 48. The dramatic action spans Zelda’s entire life by means of dialogue alone.

Zelda arrives for a therapy session only to discover that her psychiatrist has canceled her appointment. Alone in his office, Zelda plays both doctor and patient as she relives her past with ritual compulsion. Schizophrenia provides the ideal vehicle for Zelda’s fragmented remembrances. She moves through the past, revealing a rebellious nature that surfaced in the home of her Southern aristocratic parents. Against her father’s wishes, Zelda marries F. Scott Fitzgerald, beginning their whirlwind existence and mutual jealousies, all ending with her husband committing her to an asylum.

With musical interludes, voices from her past and the abrasive drawl of a duty nurse occasionally interrupting, Zelda’s recollection becomes a state of confession that results in catharsis as she battles her demons.

It is a very difficult role for one actress who has to convey the conflicted feelings and multiple personalities of this character, a large range of raw emotions. In addition to portraying all of this in one character (and at different ages of that character), the performer also has to squeeze in her father, mother, daughter, and psychiatrist—to name just a few of the characters mentioned in the play but which are not really on stage.

The play was often mounted on stages in the USA, Canada or UK. This year, for the first time in Romania it was staged at the Extremely Little Theater in Bucharest. The direction is signed by Liana Ceterchi and the leading role is played by Ioana Pavelescu.

4. The Great Gatsby on the big screen

As Albert Einstein so eloquently said “imagination will get you everywhere.” A writer’s imagination can take you from Europe to America, from Asia to The North Pole; your own mind can fill in the details written in a book, can produce vivid images of the characters. That is why reading a book is such a personal experience and the story is perceived by everyone in different, nuanced ways. When you enter the world created by the writer you also create, by reading and imagining it, a universe of your own.

Perhaps this is why, so often, after reading a book, we are disappointed by the filmed version(s). When it comes to a classic novel such as The Great Gatsby this disillusionment can be even stronger. The Great Gatsby was translated to the big screen five times in 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000 and 2013.

The first filmed version of the book was a silent movie of a stage adaptation; the cast featured Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby, Lois Wilson as Daisy Buchanan, Neil Hamilton as Nick Carraway, Georgia Hale as Myrtle Wilson, and William Powell as George Wilson. The Great Gatsby, released in 1926, directed by Herbert Brenon is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest that it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at National Archives is all that is known to exist. The film had a running time of 80 minutes, or 7,296 feet, and was designed as lightweight, popular entertainment, playing up the party scenes at Gatsby's mansion and emphasizing their scandalous elements.

Another film, also entitled The Great Gatsby, directed by Elliott Nugent, appeared in 1949. The leading role was played by Alan Ladd, Betty Field portrayed Daisy and Shelley Winters was Myrtle. The screenplay was written by Richard Maibaum and Cyril Hume based on Fitzgerald’s novel and the play by Owen Davis. The movie opens with Nick (Macdonald Carey) and Jordan Baker (Ruth Hussey) visiting Gatsby's grave before flashing back to "another life, another world" in prohibition-era New York.

The film received harsh criticism especially because it insists upon the aspects of the sentimental romance that formed the thread of the novel's fragile plot and that it barely reflects the Prohibition era. The New York Times review noted: “Indeed, there are reasons for suspecting that Paramount selected this old tale primarily as a standard conveyance for the image of its charm boy, Alan Ladd. For most of the tragic implications and bitter ironies of Mr. Fitzgerald's work have gone by the board in allowing for the generous exhibition of Mr. Ladd.”

The most famous screen version is the one from 1974 directed by Jack Clayton, on a script by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Robert Redford (Jay Gatsby), Mia Farrow (Daisy Buchanan), Sam Waterson (Nick Carraway) and Bruce Dern (Tom Buchanan). We will further discuss about this film in the following chapter of the paper.

In 2000 television film adaptation of The Great Gatsby was made in collaboration by the A&E Cable Network in the United States, and Granada Productions in Great Britain. It was directed by Robert Markowitz from a teleplay by John J. McLaughlin.

The movie casts Paul Rudd as Nick, Mira Sorvino as Daisy, and — perhaps most curiously — English actor Toby Stephens as Gatsby, one of the most quintessentially American characters in all of literature. Like the 1949 version, this adaptation opens by jumping ahead, depicting Gatsby being shot by Wilson while lounging in his pool. This version also takes the liberty of "improving" Fitzgerald's ending by having Nick throw Gatsby's monogrammed cufflinks into the bay behind his house while he delivers the book's famous closing lines.

The fifth and last time that The Great Gatsby has been filmed was in 2013. The movie, directed by Baz Luhrmann, based on a script by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce, features an outstanding cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Jay Gatsby), Tobey Maguire (Nick Carraway), Carrey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan), Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan). As we will further show it seems that nobody has successfully translated Fitzgerald’s novel to the big screen.

4.1 The 1974 film

“When all life was a fantasy, theirs was the richest fantasy of all. Robert Redford is Gatsby; Mia Farrow is Daisy in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great love story – The Great Gatsby”. This is the promotional tagline of the 1974 movie trailer and indeed this on what the film focuses, entirely missing the point of novel. 

The film, directed by Jack Clayton, is based on a script by Francis Ford Coppola, although Truman Capote was the original screenwriter. In his draft, Nick was a homosexual and Jordan Baker a vindictive lesbian. When Capote was fired, Francis Ford Coppola finished his draft in three weeks. The cast includes Robert Redford (Jay Gatsby), Mia Farrow (Daisy Buchanan), Sam Waterson (Nick Carraway), Bruce Dern (Tom Buchanan), Karen Black (Myrtle Wilson), Scott Wilson (George Wilson), Lois Chiles (Jordan Baker), Howard Da Silva (Meyer Wolfsheim), Robert Blossom (Mr. Gratz), Patsy Kensit (Pamela Buchanan).

Since the first images (while the cast is presented) we are introduced to Gatsby's opulent residence: a big manor with white columns, a swimming pool with Greek models, and a gilded salon that still resounds in a party buzz although it’s empty. Framed pictures of Daisy and a scrapbook of newspaper clippings give us a glimpse of the story yet to be told.

The film begins in the same way as the book – Nick Carraway is on a small boat on his way from West to East Egg to visit his wealthy cousin Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan. As in the novel, Nick is the voice of the narrator – he explains the circumstances and also makes remarks on the other characters. The reunion scene with his cousin reveals a spoiled and dizzy Daisy who just wants to be the center of attention; the only brief moment she seems to come to reality is when Gatsby’s name is mentioned by her friend Jordan Baker. As they sit on the terrace, having something to drink (although is Prohibition era) – the viewer is made aware of Tom’s infidelities and Daisy’s knowledge of it. As Nick leaves the Buchanan’s pontoon we see the green light – an important symbol in the novel. The next scene introduces the mysterious Gatsby as Nick sees him standing alone on his terrace reaching for the green light across the lake, almost trying to catch it in his hand. Before Nick could say something he disappears into the night. The narrative of the novel is present in the film by Nick's reflections and descriptions – while the images reveal the preparations and the party of his millionaire neighbor.

Chapter two of the book is faithfully reproduced in the film: Nick describes the scenery – The Valley of Ashes, and remarks another symbol – the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg as they appear on an advertising panel near George Wilson’s gas station. On the way to New York, Tom stops there ostensibly to talk about selling the car, but actually to arrange a meeting with his mistress, Myrtle Wilson. He and Nick later meet with her at the train station in the city and drove to the apartment the two lovers have there; a small party is quickly organized. Here Nick learns the details of the sordid affair and, once again Gatsby’s name is mentioned in relation to a big party that Myrtle’s sister, Catherine has attended recently. Tom and his “girl” get into a fight as she keeps on mentioning his wife and he hits her. All the guests leave in hurry and the party it’s over.

A scene which, in the novel takes place on the first chapter is intercalated here – Daisy’s “hart to hart” conversation to Nick about her marriage and her daughter. But the setting is changed – the action takes place at a high society party outdoors where Jordan Baker shows her golfing skills.

Nick is “actually invited” to his neighbor’s “little party” that night. The pace of the action accelerates and we see the extravaganza, luxury and squandering of the event. The music is playing loud, people are well dressed, the flappers are always caught doing their Charleston and Foxtrot – everybody is enjoying the party. Sitting at a table Nick hears from the other guests the rumors about Gatsby: he might be a German spy, he might have killed a man, he grew up in Texas and he is an oil man, or he is from Saint Paul. The mystery around him lingers.

Finally, after 35 minutes of watching the film we get to see Gatsby as he summons Nick to his office upstairs to get acquainted (unlike the book where he comes downstairs at the party). The two men have a conversation of complacency and agree to meet the following day at noon; Gatsby has a business call and excuses himself and Nick returns to the party that had gone wild and moved inside the house as it begins to rain.

The next day Gatsby shows Nick his car collection and takes him to a ride with his latest addition, while he tells some things about himself – that he comes from a wealthy family in Midwest, that he was educated in Oxford and that he has travel a great deal through Europe “trying to forget something sad that happened long ago”. He speaks of his experience during the war, how he was a major and he was decorated by the allied states and shows his decoration from Montenegro. Nick is confused and doesn’t understand why he is telling all this, Gatsby suggests that they might do some business together and introduces a friend – Mr. Wolfsheim. They have lunch together and when Gatsby leaves the table to make a phone call, Wolfsheim tells Nick that they met just after the war and back then Gatsby was so poor that he still wore his uniform since he couldn’t afford new clothes. Left alone with Gatsby, Nick finds out that Meyer Mr. Wolfsheim is a gambler who fixed the 1919 World’s Series. Tom Buchanan shows up at the restaurant and Nick introduces him to Gatsby who seems embarrassed and disappears while they were talking.

Jordan Baker pays a visit to Nick at his office and takes him for a walk through Central Park to tell him about Gatsby’s big request: to invite Daisy to tea and him also. Nick is amazed by this as Jordan reveals the old love story between the two and his desire to be reunited. In the novel, Fitzgerald explains in detail the circumstances of the romance and Daisy’s life after her marriage and the birth of her daughter; the film doesn’t. In stead, there is a scene in the pouring rain, in the evening when Gatsby comes to Nick house to find out the outcome of the discussion with Jordan and sets the details of the meeting the day after tomorrow. Anxious about the meeting with his long lost love, Gatsby “take the liberty of sending a few things” – he floods the house with white roses – her favorites, send a silver tea service, ask to mow grass on lawns. As they wait for Daisy to arrive Gatsby looses his courage and wants to leave but is prevented by Nick. The moment finally arrives. Daisy comes and is greeted outside by Nick, they enter but the room is empty; as she admires and smells the roses she sees Gatsby’s reflection in the mirror. They stare at each other for a long time and the tension seems unbearable, Nick attempts to intervene and they begin to speak. Gatsby says that they have met before; Daisy replies that they haven’t met for many years as Gatsby states “eight years, next November” (five years in the novel). Nick leaves them alone and goes outside the house – as he takes a glance through the window he sees two lovers standing still in their places. What happens inside the house remains a mystery as the film captures Nick smoking and waiting nervous to enter his own house; after a while he finally returns announcing that the rain has stopped. He finds Gatsby is a very good disposition and Daisy both crying and laughing.

The three go to see Gatsby’s mansion – in fact to hear Daisy’s opinion of it. Her voice echo while visiting the house gives the feeling of a beautiful and impersonal mausoleum, cold and uninhabitable. In their journey through lush rooms Daisy seems looks cheerful and happy but when they got to Gatsby’s bedroom and he takes out a pile of shirts and began throwing them she takes one to her chest and begins to cry stormily. There is an emotional instability that she will show throughout the film henceforth.

The movie shows next a series of meeting between the two, a remembrance of their past, a time when Daisy had a lot of admirers, all officers, including the young lieutenant Gatsby; a picking with champagne as they grow closer together.

Meanwhile Tom continues his affair with George Wilson’s wife, Myrtle and gives her gifts. This is a part of the film without dialogues, where music has a great role in suggesting the mood.

The scene where Gatsby finally confronts Daisy and ask her whether she loved her husband and why she hadn’t waited for him reveals some things better detailed in the novel: the impossibility of their love because of social differences, the circumstances before Daisy’s wedding when she received his letter, had second thoughts, but still decided to go through with is.

The Buchanans come to the biggest party Gatsby has ever thrown and Tom observes that “the whole East Egg is here” and later, as they enter another room “this is mix company – West eggers”. But when Gatsby comes along and says that there are some people they might know he says there is nobody familiar. The tension between the two men begins to accumulate as Gatsby stubbornly presents him as Daisy's husband Tom, the polo player. As the music plays louder and people begin to dance and while Tom is distracted by the appearance of Broadway’s actresses, Daisy asks Nick to remained watchfully in the garden. “In case there’s a fire or a flood, or any act of God.” Then she and Gatsby disappear into the night together. On rhythms of foxtrot the party continues until dawn. Tom is looking for his wife so they can leave and begins to ask questions about the host; he tells Nick that he thinks Gatsby is a bootlegger, Daisy appears and says that is not true and that he owns lots of drugstores. The couple departure in their car arguing and Nick is left alone.

Everybody has gone home, only Nick and Gatsby are walking on the terrace among shards of broken glass. Gatsby is expressing his fear that Daisy didn’t liked the party and states that he will fix everything and make things the way they were before. When Nick says, almost rhetorically, that you can repeat the past, Gatsby replies “of course you can!”

On the next scene Tom is training in fencing and asks a private detective to look into Gatsby’s background and to find out the source of his wealth. Meanwhile the affair between Daisy and Gatsby continues as they try to recreate the past dancing in the big ballroom – him in his lieutenant uniform and she dressed as she was in the day that they have met. When he gives her a ring she asks for him to wear it instead.

A reporter shows up at Nick’s door interested in his billionaire neighbor. Gatsby, Nick and Jordan are invited to have lunch at the Buchanan family and the scene her seems to be taken out of an absurd theatre play: Tom is on the phone with his mistress, Daisy is kissing Gatsby in front of the other guests and begins a silly dance to a music only she hears. Gatsby is stunned when the little girls enters the room and runs to her mother, Nick and Jordan also, they are embarrassed. Only Daisy is contempt to introduce her “little dream” to her friend as the child ask for her father and leaves. They all decide to go to town and while the women go upstairs to change the three men are waiting tense in front of the house. Tom goes inside to take some whiskey and Nick observes that Daisy has an indiscreet voice, Gatsby replies with one of the most memorable lines in the novel: “her voice is full of money”.

Tom suggests that they switch cars and ends up with Nick and Jordan in Gatsby’s car, while he and Daisy are coming behind in his car. Annoyed, he confesses that he made an investigation on the billionaire and found out that he didn’t study at Oxford as he claims. He stops at the gas station to refuel and finds out from a very upset George that he and his wife were to move west; confused he agrees to sell his old car to him. As they drove away Nick sees Myrtle up at the window making desperate signs but he ignores her. They all go to the Plaza Hotel complaining about the hot weather; Tom confronts Gatsby about his Oxford education and gets even angrier when he is being asked if he fought in the war. Daisy tries to intervene and causes him to say bluntly that she and Gatsby – “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” – are having an affair. Gatsby replies and says that Daisy loves him, that she has never loved her husband which she married only because he was rich. Tom and Daisy begin to fight he admits that he has had “little affairs” and that she also “gets confused sometimes”. Daisy is caught up between the two men – Gatsby insisting that she has never loved anybody else but him and Tom reminding her of their honeymoon; she begins to cry and to tell Gatsby that he wants too much and that she cannot change the past. Then she storms out of the room when the two are about to start a fight. Gatsby runs after her with Tom on his footsteps shouting about his business with Wolfsheim as bootlegger. The two lovers leave on Gatsby’s car, and back in the hotel room Nick realizes that it was his 30th birthday.

If the action was, so far, slow and dream-like sometimes, now the events are precipitating. George Wilson fights with his wife, whom he had seized in the house; Myrtle manages to run away and is hit by a car. As they also return home, Tom, Nick and Jordan see the crowd in front of the gas station and find out about the accident. Tom is shocked to learn about Myrtle’s death and that the driver of the yellow car that has run over her didn’t even stopped. The get to the Buchanan home and as he was driving away Nick sees Gatsby standing in the rain watching Daisy’s window just to make sure she is ok. The following day, Nick confronts Gatsby about the accident and finds out that she was driving; he suspects that out of love, Gatsby will take the blame; he tries to convince him to go away for a while but with no results. Meanwhile George Wilson is decided to set things straight; he goes to the Buchanan’s house and Tom tells him that the car that hit Myrtle belongs to Gatsby. When Daisy sees him she suddenly remembers the accident, she runs away in the house very agitated and picks little Pammy in her arms crying.

Talking about the summer’s end Gatsby suggest swimming in the pool, but Nick declines and heads toward his home not before encouraging him and telling that "You're worth the whole crowd of them". At the pool Gatsby glances at the blue sky thinking of Daisy and maybe realizing that he has loved a chimera. George Willson appears with a gun and shoots him three times, then, as the body sunk into the pool he commits suicide.

The final scenes of the film rely heavily on Nick Carraway’s narration of the events: the police investigation, him organizing the funeral and finding out that most of

Gatsby's acquaintances evade, not wanting their names to be associated with him. He notes bitterly that even Daisy has not phoned or sent a note.

One last character enters the scene: Henry C. Gatz – Gatsby’s father – symbolizing the average American. Now we find out that Gatsby’s real name was James (Jimmy) Gatz and that his life ambition was to improve himself, to rise in the society, to accomplish something more – as his father reads from an old notebook from his childhood. Only Nick and Mr. Gatz attend the burial.

The film ends with Nick and Jordan having lunch in a restaurant and he remarks Daisy’s carelessness. As they are just talking about the Buchanans and Jordan informs him about their plan to visit Europe, Tom appears. Nick confronts him about George Wilson and realizes that he doesn’t know that Daisy was driving the car; he wants to say something but she also appears. Flighty as usual she says that was busy with the new house and that he will be their first guest as soon as it will be ready; then the “happy” family leaves.

In the last scene of the movie Nick wanders thru Gatsby’s empty mansion thinking about this mysterious man as he watches the green light on the Buchanan’s dock. The film ends, not with the famous line of the novel as one might think, but with the bitter conclusion that Gatsby “had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him”.

The film was well received by the public and remains to this day among favorite adaptations of a novel. The critics were mixed as we will show in the next chapter. Despite this, the film was a financial success, making $26,533,200 against a $6.5 million budget.

The movie won two Oscar Awards, for Best Costume Design (Theoni V. Aldredge) and Best Music (Nelson Riddle). It also won three BAFTA Awards for Best Art Direction (John Box), Best Cinematography (Douglas Slocombe), and Best Costume Design (Theoni V. Aldredge). It won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress (Karen Black) and received three further nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Bruce Dern and Sam Waterston) and Most Promising Newcomer (Sam Waterston).

4.2 The Great Gatsby in 2013 cinematography

In a digitalized era, in a world of 3D effects of sci-fi movies, thrillers, horror and action movies a film like The Great Gatsby stands apart. Bringing back to life a world almost one hundred years old and with an estimated production budget of $100 million Baz Luhrmann's film is by far the most expensive adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel.

With a delay of several months than it was originally envisaged, awaited by the fans with both fevered and dreaded anticipation, The Great Gatsby premiered on the 10th of May 2013 in the United States and opened the Cannes Film Festival five days later.

Modifying the narrative framing of the book right from the beginning, the film presents Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) as an alcoholic patient in a sanitarium, where he begins to tell a doctor the story of what happened during the summer of 1922. Nick’s writing process allows him to give voice to the original prose. The fabled lines fly from his typewriter’s keys as graphics across the movie screen, a consummation between the book and the film and a tribute to Fitzgerald’s writings. The viewers are taken back in time in New York in the 1920s when “the tempo of the city has changed, the building were higher, the parties were bigger”.

Flashback to the year 1922—we hear Nick speak about his time before meeting Jay Gatsby. We learn about Nick’s move from the Midwest to New York City to work on Wall Street. He speaks of his new home and how he lived next door to Gatsby, a man who would throw the most extravagant parties, a man considered wealthy beyond comparison, yet who would always keep himself hidden from society, even from his own party guests. Nick’s curiosity about Jay is soon satisfied, as he receives an invitation from Gatsby himself to come to one of his extravagant parties, where he meets Gatsby for the very first time. The two become good friends, over time, but questions still lurk in Nick’s mind, “Who is Gatsby? What is he hiding?”

The main shift from the novel revolves around the tone and representation rather than changes to the narrative. The film uses a lot of the same dialogue from its source material, which is unsurprising given the artistry of Fitzgerald’s prose. Luhrmann instead eschews some of the subtlety of the novel in favor of excess. Elements that are dealt with nuance are shifted to centre stage in this version.

Like the novel, the relationship between Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Daisy (Carey Mulligan) dominates the narrative. However, Luhrmann pushes this further with an almost undivided focus on the relationship. There is less emphasis on Gatsby’s past and rise, except in relation to Daisy. Nick functions almost entirely as a narrator in the film, with much less being made of his interactions with Jordan Baker. The framing device employed in The Great Gatsby is not really necessary. It seems to have been added in to underscore the main narrative as a recollection; with the archive footage and overlaid text feeding into this.

Unlike the book where Gatsby complex character is sketched by others, the film abounds in confessional expositions of him. In the novel’s devastating conclusion, we learn and empathize with James Gatz’s authentic identity, but in the film Gatsby’s secret is revealed much earlier.

Fitzgerald was a romantic but not a sensualist, a limitation in his writing he acknowledged. In the film, director Buz Luhrmann mildly spices Fitzgerald’s prissiness, showing Gatsby and Daisy kissing, and includes a brief montage of bedroom shots, but in matters of the flesh he stays largely faithful to the decorum of the novel. It makes for an interesting contrast to the orgiastic bacchanal of Gatsby’s parties, paralleled in higher relief than in the novel, but it doesn’t provide the lovers with enough sparks to reclaim each other.

One particular scene that ruins, in a way the storyline is when at the moment the gunman’s bullet is passing through Gatsby’s heart, Daisy, who has chosen to remain with Tom, attempts to telephone him. In the novel Daisy’s choice and depravity are very clear; in the film is put under question.

The book’s verdicts on the American myth are brought to life through the memorable studies of Gatsby, Daisy, Nick, Tom, Jordan, Myrtle Wilson, and even Meyer Wolfsheim. Unfortunately, the film proves unable to transmit those characters, in all their complexity, from the page to the big screen.

Leonardo DiCaprio does a marvelous job as the mysterious socialite by accentuating Gatsby’s disconnect from reality. Just like the visuals, Gatsby’s perspective is skewed and hindered by materialism and DiCaprio switches from a spoiled frat boy poser to a hopeless romantic.

Carey Mulligan, delightful as always, adds depth to the flamboyant Daisy. She and DiCaprio portray the two lovers completely out of synchronization with a love that runs only as deep as public perception. An emotional moment in the film is when Daisy's tortured conscience attempts to break through her superficial and flowery façade.

Among the other principals, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) is even more brutal and less emotionally developed than by Fitzgerald’s hand. Luhrmann uses Tom exclusively as a bully, and there is no sense of what could have ever brought him and Daisy together. Nor is there any of the finer definition that made them sharply “careless people.” Tom is a thuggish, racist, philandering bully. And this highlights a further problem with the film: if Tom has no redeeming qualities (except his money), we can't see why Daisy's with him (except his money) and so she appears shallow, which means we can't see why Gatsby likes her, except that she's pretty. And, as it seems Gatsby has made money through some extremely nefarious means, we can't see why she likes him, except for his money, and that five years ago they had a romance. It's exactly this problem that makes the entire film feel shallow; we never identify emotionally with any of the characters. None of them grow or develop, so we don't follow them through any real changes — which isn't a flaw with the book, it's a flaw with making the book into a film.

Equally diminished is the treatment of Jordan Baker’s character (Elizabeth Debicki). Her chatty affair with Nick, an appealing counterpoint in the novel to Gatsby’s and Daisy’s tortured silences, is absent from the film, making these character cutouts more cardboard than flesh.

As for Nick Carraway – Tobey Maguire does not succeed to present the detached but fine observer that the character is in the book. Sometimes he seems uncomfortable in a scene and sometimes his narration is just dull. The director’s choice to identify the character with Fitzgerald himself is obvious at the movie’s end, when Nick finishes typing the manuscript of a novel titled The Great Gatsby.

From the opening titles to the final scene, The Great Gatsby is visually sumptuous. The 3D looks fantastic and is employed smartly with the highly stylized look of the film. The cinematography makes the most of this extra dimension. The camera work is at times disorientating in paralleling the frenzied nature of the mood and action.

The rhythm of the film is inconsistent from time to time; in the beginning, some of the scenes literally race across the screen, later, however, the story slows itself down to a gradual pace.

We have to appreciate the scenery of the film. The sets are a spectacle to behold. From the fine décor inside and outside Gatsby’s mansion, to the beauty of the Hudson River, it all has an authentic look.

At times, the music during Gatsby’s parties does not fit the story, it is implausible. The director wanted to give this version of the film a more “modern flare” so we can hear pop music mix with jazz and even rap.

4.3 Critics and reviews on the films

When it was released on March 1974 The Great Gatsby made a distinctive note to the other films of that year: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (directed by Martin Scorsese), Chinatown (directed by Roman Polanski), The Godfather Part II and The Conversation (both directed by Francis Ford Coppola).

Eagerly awaited by fans of the book, sumptuous and highly developed, the film lives mainly by evoking nostalgic ambiance of the famous "Annees Foles'. Although the film was a box-office hit, The Great Gatsby received mixed to negative reviews. The film was praised for its interpretation and staying true to the novel, but was criticized for lacking any true emotion or feelings towards the Jazz Age.

In a review entitled “A Lavish 'Gatsby' Loses Book's Spirit: The Cast”, Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times: “It completely mistakes the essence of Fitzgerald's novel, which is not in its story but in its headlong, elliptical literary style that dazzles us by the manner in which it evokes character and event, rather than with the characters and events themselves. Nothing that Mr. Clayton does with the actors or with the camera comes close to catching the spirit of Fitzgerald's impatient brilliance.” The author criticize the length of the film (146 minutes) ant its “lifeless”; in reference to the cast he notes Sam Waterston’s performance as Nick Carraway and Bruce Dern’s as Tom Buchannan, but he is not so kind with Mia Farrow which he calls “eccentric and unfathomable as Daisy”. The critic concludes that the movie “It's frivolous without being much fun.”

The review on Time magazine was also negative. Jay Cocks wrote that “The film is faithful to the letter of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel but entirely misses its spirit”.

Variety's review was likewise split: "Paramount's third pass at The Great Gatsby is by far the most concerted attempt to probe the peculiar ethos of the Beautiful People of the 1920s. The fascinating physical beauty of the $6 million-plus film complements the utter shallowness of most principal characters from the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Robert Redford is excellent in the title role, the mysterious gentleman of humble origins and bootlegging connections…. The Francis Ford Coppola script and Jack Clayton's direction paint a savagely genteel portrait of an upper class generation that deserved in spades what it received circa 1929 and after."

Like the 1974 version, the 2013 film has mixed reviews. The Newyorker’s critic, David Denby notes that “Luhrmann whips Fitzgerald’s sordid debauch into a saturnalia—garish and violent, with tangled blasts of music, not all of it redolent of the Jazz Age.” The picture is filled with an indiscriminate swirling motion, a thrashing impress of “style” (Art Deco turned to digitized glitz), thrown at us with whooshing camera sweeps and surges and rapid changes of perspective exaggerated by 3-D. Denby emphasizes the director’s vulgarity which “is designed to win over the young audience, and it suggests that he’s less a filmmaker than a music-video director with endless resources and a stunning absence of taste”.

Hollywood Reporter’s review noted that, although the dramatic challenges posed by the character of narrator Nick Carraway remain problematic, the cast is first-rate, the ambiance and story provide a measure of the novel’s main themes: the American dream, the self-reinvention and love lost, regained and lost again. Todd McCarthy states is his article that “Luhrmann must be given credit for delivering a real interpretation of the famous 1925 novel, something not seriously attempted by the previous adaptations” and appreciates a “film that, most of the time, feels vibrantly alive while remaining quite faithful to the spirit, if not the letter or the tone, of its source.”

“Baz Luhrmann sucks the life out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s immortal novel and replaces it with empty filigree and overbearing style” – this is how the harshest review begins. Alosno Duarde writes on The Wrap blog that he cardinal sin of the film is that it’s dull; he emphasizes that "The Great Gatsby uses the unbridled excess of the Roaring Twenties as an excuse to unleash the unbridled excess of 21st century digital effects, but we're left with nothing but roar”.

The Brithish review on The Telegraph is also negative. Robbie Collin remarks Luhrmann’s style, but it’s not Fitzgerald’s, in this high-budget Hollywood film. The critic appreciates Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan for their performances and notes that “On the rare occasions Luhrmann gives them space to act in the pulsating frenzy of his Jazz Age world, both do a wonderful job.”

One particular remark – in reference with this last version of The Great Gatsby, but which seems to apply to all the cinematographic attempts, summarizes the approach of this paper: “The Great Gatsby should be left in peace. The book is too intricate, too subtle, too tender for the movies. Fitzgerald’s illusions were not very different from Gatsby’s, but his illusionless book resists destruction even from the most aggressive and powerful despoilers.”

5. Conclusions

Almost one hundred years have passed since F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, the times have dramatically changed, people mentality as well, we live in the digital era and everything seems to be at the reach of our fingertips. Yet still, a century later, the novel still stirs interest of readers and moviegoers; and not only for the tragic and impossible love story it presents. The Great Gatsby is relevant today mostly because it speaks about the potential destructiveness of pursuing the American Dream at any cost.

In his novel, Fitzgerald draws a ruthless portrait of the American society in 1920s, but in many ways, the contemporary consumer society fits the description. It is a timeless story which makes us think carefully which dreams to pursue and to consider just how far we have to go in order to achieve them. Also it makes us question the American Dream and its corruption or even death.

The main qualities of the American Dream presented in The Great Gatsby are perseverance, hope and the idea of success against all odds. Gatsby is a man who has all of the purest traits of the old American hero, hope, perseverance, hard working ambition, and a thirst for adventure, but he loses them by wearing the dream's modern face. Gatsby's goal gave him a purpose in life, which sets him apart from the rest of the upper class. He is constantly chasing his dream of being with Daisy, from the moment he stretches toward the green light on her dock to his finial days of life when he patiently waits for hours outside her house even though she has already abandoned her affair with him. Gatsby has loved a chimera, only to discover (and not admit) that Daisy – the real woman is far away from his idealized version of her. In a way his tragic death forbids him from admitting the bitter truth: Daisy chooses to preserve her social position, her carefree and leisure life with her husband.

But the worst qualities of the dream's modern face are evident in Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who live without any hopes or regrets because the foundation of their character is money and wealth. Nick describes the Buchanan's as such: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"

Any chance of the old American Dream of surviving in the dehumanized modern world is destroyed with Gatsby’s death. All of the hopes and dreams that strengthened and uplifted Gatsby are shattered as he lies in his pool, dazed and confused about the world he is living in and about to leave. After shooting Gatsby, George Wilson, the symbol of the common man who is trying to achieve his own success in the modern dream, commits suicide. The deaths of both the rich and poor man trying to achieve their goals symbolize the death of the old American Dream which is now completely lost and can never be restored.

The Great Gatsby does not offer, nor provide solutions for restoring the American dream, only raises a mirror to reflect society's decline. Although The Great Gatsby reflected the glitter of the Roaring Twenties, it should be noted that the contemporary consumer society is as focused on money as the society was in the '20s. This explains why this novel is so relevant to our own times.

We must also emphasize on the huge historical value of the story. Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age”, a politically and socially crucial and chaotic period of American history.

Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. What is unique about this “chronicle” is the fact that is the portrait of an era written not in retrospect by in real-time by the author – both participant and witness to the events and society.

  Fitzgerald’s view of the Twenties was serious and complex, for he recognized the glamour as well as the waste, the charm as well as the self-destruction. Through his characters, he not only captures a snapshot of middle- and upper-class American life in the 1920s, but also conveys a series of criticisms as well.

In the book Fitzgerald offers up commentary on a variety of themes — justice, power, greed, betrayal, the American dream and the social stratification. The Great Gatsby is regarded as a brilliant piece of social commentary, offering a vivid peek into American life in the Roaring Twenties. The 1920s marked a time of great post-war economic growth, and Fitzgerald captures the frenzy of the society well. Although, of course, Fitzgerald could have no way of foreseeing the stock market crash of 1929, the world he presents in The Great Gatsby seems clearly to be headed for disaster. They have assumed skewed worldviews, mistakenly believing their survival lies in stratification and reinforcing social boundaries. They erroneously place their faith in superficial external means (such as money and materialism), while neglecting to cultivate the compassion and sensitivity that, in fact, separate humans from the animals.

While The Great Gatsby remains one of the great American novels, its translation to the big screen always was the object of controversies. The Great Gatsby was screened five times in 1926, 1949, 1974, 2000 and 2013. The cinematographic history has showed that the novel is, to put it gently, very hard to film.

The 1926 silent movie directed by Herbert Brenon, was a disappointment for F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald who went to see the film in Los Angeles. Zelda wrote to her daughter Scottie: "We saw The Great Gatsby in the movies. It's ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left."

Neither the 1949 film was a success; directed by Elliott Nugent, it starred Alan Ladd, Betty Field and Shelley Winters. Made as a flash-back of Nick (Macdonald Carey) and Jordan Baker (Ruth Hussey) while visiting Gatsby's grave, the film received harsh criticism especially because it insists upon the aspects of the sentimental romance and it barely reflects the Jazz Age.

In 1974 Robert Redford portrayed Jay Gatsby and, although the film was a box office hit, critics were mix. The main reproach was that it failed to capture the novel’s atmosphere and main themes, while Mia Farrow made an annoying, hysterical, over-excited Daisy. The movie underlines the love story between Gatsby and Daisy but the cast, unfortunately, does not succeed to make that romance credible.

A 2000 television film adaptation of The Great Gatsby also use the flash back technique – this time the movie starts with Gatsby’s death and returns to the beginning of the story. It also failed to translate the book’s profound magic to the screen.

The 2013 film lavish 3D take on The Great Gatsby, directed by Baz Luhrmann, is by far the most expensive adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel with a budget of 100 million dollars. Critics disapproved the way Nick Carraway was converted into an alcoholic drying out at a sanatorium who writes the entire text of “The Great Gatsby.” Although the film manages to evoke the Roaring Twenties its music is far from the Jazz Age. The lack of style, the surplus of 3D effects was also criticized. Leonardo DiCaprio was in stead applauded for his interpretation of Gatsby.

Whatever ordeals made ​​so far it seems that none succeeded to fully translate the novel to the big screen. Each of the films has managed to excel only in some aspects. Perhaps one of the main problems with adapting a famous literary work for film is that there is a lot of subtext and nuance to try and capture in a visual super-text medium. Through the years film directors have tried to use narration, to convert it into dialogue, to express it through images – all without the intended effect.

A book like The Great Gatsby proves once again that a well-written story can pass the test of time; generation after generation, from the 1920s until now, have discovered and appreciated Fitzgerald’s novel and the universe he has created. It is up to the future to deliver a film that can truly rise up to the book.

6. Appendix

Original book cover – 1925 illustration by Francis Cugat

Poster The Great Gatsby 1926 film

Poster The Great Gatsby 1949 film

Poster The Great Gatsby 1974 film

Poster The Great Gatsby 2000 film

Poster The Great Gatsby 2013 film

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5

Appendix 6

Bibliography:

Books:

Marele Gatsby, de Fitzgerald, F. Scott, traducerea: Ivănescu, Mircea, editura Polirom, București, 2007

The Great Gatsby, by Fitzgerald, F. Scott eBooks@Adelaide, The University of Adelaide Library, South Australia, 2013

The Crack-Up, by Fitzgerald, F. Scott, edited by Wilson,Edmund, New directions Publishers, New York, 1945

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference, by Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph , Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, 2000

Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, by Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph , University of South Carolina Press, 2002

Literary Masters: F. Scott Fitzgerald, by Baughman, Judith S. with Bruccoli, Matthew J.,  Manly/The Gale Group, Detroit 2000.

The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, by Mizener, Arthur, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1951

Scott Fitzgerald, by Turnbull, Andrew, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1962

The Last Flapper, by Luce, William, Samuel French Inc., New York, 1990

Web pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org

www.elevator.org

www.guardian.co.uk

www.hollywoodreporter.com

www.imdb.com

www.metacritic.com

www.newyorker.com

www.nytimes.com

www.telegraph.co.uk

www.thegreatgatsbyplay.com

www.the-numbers.com

www.thewrap.com

www.washingtonpost.com