Film · Documentary

What Gatsby Saw

A documentary by author Steven Goldleaf. This 2003 extremely low-budget 32-minute documentary traces the geographic roots of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, setting straight Fitzgerald scholars’ mistaken assumptions (including some in the authoritative 1991 annotated Cambridge edition of the novel) about where the novel was set, where Fitzgerald deliberately distorted the geography for literary effect, where he misapplied his geographic knowledge of Long Island and New York City. It traces where Fitzgerald lived and traveled as he was composing the novel, with many photographs of these locations in the mid-1920s. In one instance WHAT GATSBY SAW identifies (with a contemporary photograph) the precise location of the fatal automobile accident at the story’s climax, which had never before been definitively established. (credit Steven Goldleaf).