My Great Grandmother swanned about in the 1920s, chin held high, suitcases ready. Rake thin, bobbed hair; fierceness and glamour. I recently found some family snaps of her-with servants on an exotic beach, kimono draped, parasol held aloft. Or behind the wheel of a massive Buick. These photos seem all the more poignant after the recent release of The Great Gatsby. Suddenly she makes sense.
It was in Newcastle this week [from whence her husband, my great-grandfather, came]that I saw the film The Great Gatsby, and my impression of the film was of being in the middle of a glitter snowstorm-hideous excess, indulgence, emptiness, glamour, aspiration and all things synthetic. It was claustrophobic and atmospheric to the same intensity as Tennessee Williams' 'A Streetcar Named Desire', capturing the cultural fault-line of between-the-war debauchery, of searching and forgetting, a society transitioning self-consciously. Spiderman, sorry, Toby Maguire, got to limpidly obsess over a damaged ambitious social climber, Leonardo made full use of his dimples,successfully bringing them out of early retirement but still unable to avoid a watery grave, Carey adeptly dissolved into vapid elegance, and it all ended unhappily ever after.
Dazzling, dizzying, poignant, and utterly lovely.
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| in grandmother's footsteps... |
I've got a couple of genuine 1920s beauties in my shop at the moment [as modeled above]... visit www.mothandmagpie.etsy.com
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