Gatsby’s Green Light, as Told through Cinema

By Sinead McCausland

An exploration of Baz Luhrmann’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ and how it finally deals with The Green Light.

In James Truslow Adams’ “The Epic of America” (1931), the historian described the American Dream as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” This idea of equal opportunity has been explored through novels and movies, the respective mediums portraying the evolution of this dream through the changes in ways we tell stories. From John Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl-era “Of Mice and Men” (1939) to The Wizard of Oz’s yellow brick road of discovery, the American Dream has found a home in both the written word and visual imagery.

While Steinbeck’s novels have received their fair share of adaptations (from directors like John Ford to Elia Kazan, no less), there remains one pervading American Dream adaptation filmmakers keep coming back to, old sport.

Everyone knows at least something about “The Great Gatsby.” Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the early 20th century, the tale of the titular character is told from the perspective of the readers’ unreliable narrator, Nick Carraway. The novel contains empty wealth, observing eyes, and a lot of “old sport”s. Most importantly, Fitzgerald creates one of the most prominent and lasting images of the American Dream: the all-important green light.

Beginning with the lost 1926 film, there are six-and-counting “Gatsby” adaptations. There’s a reason filmmakers keep returning to Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel: they haven’t figured out how to translate it onscreen. That is, until Baz Lurhmann’s 2013 consciously superficial and almost satirical version. Where 2000’s TV movie The Great Gatsby and Jack Clayton’s 1974 film of the same name attempted to mold their movies to fit the book, Lurhmann’s version adapted the source material and made it new for the big screen. And it’s because of Luhrmann’s aesthetic vision that the 2013 film remains the best depiction of Gatsby’s green light and the American Dream. Rather than trying to show Fitzgerald’s novelistic American Dream, Lurhmann re-represents it to fit cinema.

Every Gatsby film presents the green light in new ways, reflecting the artistic dreams of the film’s era. So, what does it mean when the film finally gets the green light right over ninety years after the source material?

Only the trailer for 1926’s The Great Gatsby remains. However, the few shots that fill the trailer – presumably Gatsby and Daisy embracing; a glamorous pool party; a looming, grand staircase in Gatsby’s mansion – show us that the film would have been an extravagant, dramatic party to rival Gatsby’s.

As The New Yorker’s Richard Brody writes, it’s the twelve seconds of party scenes “that give the trailer its enduring power.” When readers pick up Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” they do so because they want to find out what makes him great. Likewise, when audiences watch its filmic adaptation, it’s because they’re curious as to what Gatsby’s parties look like. “It isn’t just vulgar tumult,” Brody says of the 1926 lost version, “but also a play of iridescent, ever so slightly translucent allure.”

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