In planning his novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “I want to write something new – something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” Working with anxiety and saw he feeling that it was the supreme test, he committed all his imaginative resources to the project. He eagerly awaited the reception of his masterpiece. T. S. Eliot immediately saw The Great Gatsby for what it was “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James,” however, the reviewers and public were not enthusiastic. Only in the subsequent years, after Fitzgerald’s death, has the novel The Great Gatsby come be seen as perhaps the great 20th century American novel, and the character Jay Gatsby, as one of the truly mythological creations in American culture.
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I’ve read the book and seen all the extant previous adaptations, and thought it was superb. The Redford version was far too self-conscious ‘classic adaptation’ and soporific: more Jane Austen-tedious than Jazz-Age. The 1949 film was hampered by the Hays Code, but Alan Ladd was excellent in it, and indeed, DiCaprio conveyed similar qualities in the new version. I also admire the 2000 BBC adaptation (Toby Stephens and Mira Sorvino) but of the cinema versions, this is the best.