The Great Gatsby: Midnight in Manhattan

Released to coincide with the arrival of Baz Luhrmann's blockbuster adaptation of The Great Gatsby, this 2000 BBC-aired documentary looks at author F. Scott Fitzgerald and his most famous novel. Featuring interviews with such literary luminaries as George Plimpton, Christopher Hitchens, Hunter S. Thompson, William Styron, Harold Bloom, and Garrison Keillor, the film opens with Fitzgerald's former secretary, Frances Kroll Ring, visiting the house where the author lived, worked, and died (at age 44), something she hadn't done in 60 years. Also on hand is Fitzgerald's granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, who offers keen insights into the writer's life and thinking. A self-invented celebrity-artist, Fitzgerald had much in common with his immortal character Jay Gatsby. The son of a failed businessman from St. Paul, Fitzgerald pined for luxury and glory so much he kept revising his dream about how to achieve it. Fitzgerald—who sported good looks, charm, and talent—massaged his image constantly, and had a nearly erotic fascination with wealth. The cultural context of the Jazz Age for The Great Gatsby is discussed in detail, as is the book's darker subtext about materialism, identity, and the American dream. Fitzgerald saw his wife, Zelda, as a path to his own success: she had beauty, money, and social position, everything he wanted (unfortunately, she was also mentally unstable). Passages from The Great Gatsby are read aloud here (the novel didn't sell particularly well during Fitzgerald's lifetime), and the documentary delves more into how Scott and Zelda became “the Adam and Eve of celebrity culture.” DVD extras include a 1975 British TV play entitled “Private Affairs: A Dream of Living”—starring David Hemmings as Fitzgerald, Annie Lambert as Zelda, and Charles Keating as Ernest Hemingway—a day-in-the-life portrait that finds Hemingway pushing Fitzgerald to forget his social-climbing distractions and just write. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (T. Keogh)