"Ceaselessly into the past" : noir, fascination, and nostalgia in Fitzgerald's The great gatsby and Hitchcock's Vertigo

Abstract

The re-emergence in popular culture of two narratives rooted in noir sensibilities-The Great Gatsby, reimagined in Baz Luhrmann's forthcoming film adaptation and Hitchcock's Vertigo, recently named BFI's Greatest Film of All Time-partakes in both nostalgic return and an attempt to understand our own troubled American identity. This study explores Gatsby's and Vertigo's profound thematic and formal connections with film noir and its engagement with early twentieth century crises of identity. These narratives share a paradoxical fear of and desire for the past. Both texts also share noir's capacity to inspire fascination in critical and noncritical audiences alike. My thesis probes these latest vogues of Gatsby and Vertigo as instances of America's durable fascination with noir narratives; I focus on the ways that the texts' narrative and formal properties inspire nostalgic confusion between ideal and reality that marks subsequent adaptations, critical writing, and audience responses.