F. Scott Fitzgerald on Silent Film

Martina Mastandrea, Ph.D. (2018), SAS, University of London, is an independent scholar and English teacher in Venice, Italy. She has published articles and reviews on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Louisa May Alcott. She is the winner of the 2020 Blake Emerging Scholar Award and the joint award winner of the 2021 EAAS Rob Kroes Award.

• AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction1. Rediscovering The Chorus Girl’s Romance: “Head and Shoulders” on the Silver Screen2. Myra Meets the Silver Screen: Howard M. Mitchell’s The Husband Hunter3. “She Kissed Him Softly in the Adaptation”: “The Offshore Pirate” on the Silent Screen4. “Thousands Have Read the Book, Millions Will See the Film”: The Beautiful and Damned from the Page to the Silver Screen5. Adapting Fitzgerald’s Irish Legacy: “The Camel’s Back” from Paper to Celluloid6. “Dreams of the Old Days”: “Memories” of the Silent Gatsby and its “Music Score”7. “Savor of Anti-climax”: “The Pusher-in-the-Face” and the End of the “Good Old Silent Days”ConclusionFilmographyWorks citedIndex

"Mastandrea’s methodology aligns with current scholarship, which looks at Fitzgerald’s work through interdisciplinary perspectives. She ambitiously and ably interweaves textual, visual, multimodal, and multilingual materials, many of which have been previously overlooked [...]. In her investigation, Mastandrea conveys the excitement that can accompany the detective work in the researcher’s process [...]. Gender roles and how the adaptations adjusted them due to conventions, censorship, and intended audiences are recurring subjects in Mastandrea’s study [...]. Her interpretations of the sheer number and variety of sources explored are convincing and, more importantly, create a more nuanced picture of Fitzgerald’s relationship to film and of the way his stories and characters took shape in this medium. Mastandrea’s restoration of the silent cinema adaptations provides scholars with new material to explore her discussion of their impact on the presentation and reception of a newly established author should encourage a reevaluation of these films and of this early period in Fitzgerald’s life and work." – Lara Rodríguez Sieweke, Umeå University, in: The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 20 (2022)