What is it about The Great Gatsby that makes us return to the novel – perhaps the American novel – time and again? For one, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story of wealth, love, and fraud continues to speak to the conflicting ethics and appetite of the “self-made man.”
The glitter and opulence of the 1920s certainly has visual appeal for film directors – since its 1925 publication, the novel has been adapted for the big screen three times, yet none of these adaptations carry the same weight as the book – perhaps because this weight is one of airiness. Philip Hensher of The Telegraph explains: “There is something gorgeous but empty about much of the lyrical rhetoric – ‘Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine’ … The whole novel, as well as its world, has something second-hand and vacant about it.”
Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann hopes to recapture the original “exquisite” atmosphere of the novel in a fourth adaptation to be released later this year, partially through the use of 3-D cinematography. Read more at the Telegraph here.