Jay Gatsby

I just read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby over the holidays, and it is completely apparent now the Gatsby that lies in all the protagonists of the three chosen films: Holly Golightly, John Robie, and Marcello Mastroianni. It is always an outsider, with a past that he/she has struggled with and tries to forget, and the contrast of wanting into a world of opulence and luxury. The tragedy is not as apparent in some than in others. But it is also interesting to see the many other iterations of this novel's covers. Often they are over romanticized, pastel-dominated renditions of the Jazz Age, but this photograph, reminiscent of a film still, of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan looking out over Long Island Sound from West Egg is calm and tense all at once.