Bernice

Consistency in the Way Bernice Bobs Her Hair: A Comparison of Joan Silver's Film and Fitzgerald's Original Short Story

Scott Fitzgerald's depiction of the Roaring Twenties has long been lauded as a richly detailed and highly picture of the spirit and the aesthetics of the time, with the frivolity, depravity, and humanity of the period practically leaping off of the pages he scribed. His short story "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is no exception to this general assessment of his works, showing the attitudes, the superficiality, and the underlying emotional and social conflicts that bubble just beneath the surface of the young and moneyed in 1920s America. Joan Silver's 1976 film adaptation of the story, which remains highly faithful to Fitzgerald's text, manages to capture this spirit quite directly and completely, and from beginning to end creates both an homage to Fitzgerald and a real recognition of the characters and...
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