Summary
Daisy finds a number of scrapbooks of Gatsby's in which he has saved photos and newspaper clippings about her. Nick looks at a photo of Gatsby taken during his "Oxford days." Gatsby takes a phone call—something about Wolfsheim—as Nick and Daisy continue to look at the photos. Daisy runs to the window and notices the pink clouds, telling Gatsby she wants to put him in one of them and push him around.
Gatsby shows them his clothes, bought for him by a man in London. He begins flinging the clothes around the room, delighting Nick and Daisy. Soon, however, Daisy begins crying, saying, "I've never seen such beautiful shirts before." Nick leaves the room and Gatsby looks at Daisy, concerned.
Jordan and Nick drive up to Wilson's garage in the valley of ashes, and Nick comments on what a horrible driver Jordan is. As Mr. Wilson fills the car with gas and Nick warns Jordan to be more careful, she assures him, "It takes two to make an accident." Nick pays Wilson 40 cents for the gas, and they drive away. Wilson goes inside and calls to Myrtle, but she isn't there.
Myrtle is at the New York apartment with Tom sharing a romantic afternoon. She tries on some new clothes he bought her and they smile at each other.
Nick fixes a bicycle outside his cottage, then looks over at Gatsby's mansion. Inside the mansion, Daisy and Gatsby sit and reminisce about their early courtship. Gatsby comments on the fact that it was hard to get Daisy alone. Daisy thinks it was because her parents did not approve of their union, but Gatsby remembers that it was because Daisy had so many officers who were courting her at the time. Gatsby cannot stop talking about all the suitors Daisy had, even though Daisy insists that now Gatsby has her full attention. "Do you remember their names?" he asks her. She tells him they were "silly young men, so silly to let an 18 year old girl into their hearts...Sentimental." Smiling at Gatsby, Daisy says, "You were never sentimental, Jay."
Later, they look at the scrapbooks Gatsby kept with all the newspaper articles about Daisy's life. Daisy asks Gatsby why he sits and stands so far away from her. "It's been a very long time since I've been able to look at you," he tells her. She extends her hand to him and reaches out to her, but they cannot quite touch. Daisy mentions that Gatsby was her "favorite beau" all those years ago, and that she wishes he still had his uniform from all those years ago. "I do still have my uniform," he says, to which Daisy replies, "Then you are a sentimental man."
They sit on the lawn together talking and drinking cocktails. Meanwhile, Myrtle and Tom spend a romantic evening at their New York apartment.
We see Daisy visiting Gatsby on another day. He asks her if she ever loved Tom, and she tells him, "I don't want to talk about Tom, or my wedding. It makes me sad, and I want to be happy." Gatsby wants to hear Daisy say she didn't love Tom, but she won't say it, and she becomes a little upset. "I told you I'd come back for you in my letter," Gatsby says, disappointedly. Daisy tells him that she waited a long time, before lowering her voice and saying, "We were so close in our month of love." Gatsby still wants to know why Daisy married Tom, and she details her early courtship with Tom: his lavish wealth, his family name, the way he "blinded [her] with excitement."
Abruptly, Gatsby references the fact that Tom gave her pearls that were worth $350,000, a bit of gossip that Jordan told him. Daisy is offended that he would bring it up and tells him that on the night that she received the pearls she got "drunk as a monkey" and was holding onto a letter that Gatsby had sent her. "And the next day at 5:00 you married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver," Gatsby says. Daisy tells him she took a cold bath on the night of the wedding, holding the letter, which came apart in the water, "melted away like snow."
When Gatsby asks her again why she didn't marry him, she says, "Because rich girls don't marry poor boys, Jay Gatsby."
Daisy goes to a party at Gatsby's house with Tom and Jordan. Tom greets a number of wealthy men he knows as they enter the house. They run into Nick on the veranda. Daisy tells Tom that she's running away to Africa with Nick. All of a sudden, Gatsby comes up behind Daisy and greets her. "I believe we've met somewhere before," Gatsby says to Tom, and Tom remembers him from the club with Wolfsheim. Gatsby walks them around the party, introducing them to people and pointing out celebrities.
As they look over at a gaggle of giggling flappers—actresses from a new Broadway show—Daisy tauntingly hands Tom a "little gold pencil" and tells him he can go ask for their information. Jordan grabs Tom's arm and drags him away, as Daisy and Gatsby talk intimately near a fountain. "You'll keep watch, won't you? In case there's a fire, a flood, or an act of God," Daisy says to Nick, and she and Gatsby run off to have a private moment away from the party.
Later at the party, Tom asks Nick where Daisy went, and he tells him that she went off with Gatsby and some people. "Who is this Gatsby fellow?" Tom asks Nick, "Some big bootlegger?" Nick tells Tom about what he's heard about Gatsby's wealth, but Tom insists that most of the new money comes from bootlegging alcohol. Daisy comes up behind them and comments on the fact that the party was fun. Tom is jealous that she was off with Gatsby and they leave the party. As she gets in the car, Daisy tells Tom that Gatsby owns a lot of drugstores.
After the party is over, Nick goes for a walk with Gatsby, who worries that Daisy didn't have a good time. "You can't repeat the past," Nick tells him, but Gatsby insists, "Of course you can."
The next day Tom fences in his yard, and asks Nick to find out more about Gatsby's biography.
During a rendezvous, Daisy tells Gatsby to put on his old uniform, that they can light one candle and she'll let him tell her he loves her. They dance by candlelight to the radio in Gatsby's ballroom. They reminisce about a night in October, many years ago, the night they met. We see them in flashback.
The next day, Gatsby tells Daisy that he bought his house just to be across the bay from her. He hands her a beautiful ring, and she tells him she cannot wear it, telling him to wear it for her. "I'll be your husband," he tells her, and they kiss passionately.
A reporter from The New York Journal rings Nick's door wanting to ask him some questions about Gatsby. "Seems he and Meyer Wolfsheim got something big cooking," the reporter says, but Nick doesn't want to tell him anything, suggesting that he talk to Gatsby himself if he wants to know something.
In voiceover, we hear Nick narrate, "It was when curiosity about Gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one Saturday night." We see a seagull dead on the rocks of the harbor. Nick picks it up and examines it, then sees Gatsby standing outside his house nearby. "I hear you fired all your servants," Nick says to Gatsby, and Gatsby explains that with Daisy coming over so often, he doesn't want their affair to get found out.
As Gatsby walks away, Nick says, "They say you killed a man," which makes Gatsby smirk.
We see Gatsby and Daisy lying down beside a koi pond. "I love the way you love me," Daisy says, tenderly. Inside, Gatsby tells Daisy he wants to tell Tom about their affair, and Daisy agrees that they should tell him soon.
Analysis
The camerawork in the film clues the reader in to the dramatic stakes of the scene. Most often, a steady zoom is used to heighten tension and drama at key moments. Earlier, these occurred when Daisy would express a climactic thought, particularly about her unhappy marriage to Tom. A momentous zoom occurs in this section when Gatsby leaves the room to take a call as Nick and Daisy look at his photos. Gatsby points to a photo from his Oxford days before leaving the room to take a mysterious business call. As he makes a somewhat pretentious show of his Oxford pedigree, the camera zooms in on Nick, who wears a somewhat bemused and skeptical face. Here, the camera aligns the viewer with Nick and asks us to question the validity of Gatsby's self-regard and upperclass status.
As smitten as Gatsby and Daisy are with one another, there is a darkness residing beneath their love, one which Nick cannot quite figure out. Daisy's delight and adoration of Gatsby is followed close behind by a sense of dread. This is exemplified in the moment Gatsby shows Nick and Daisy his clothes. He throws his shirts through the air, making an ostentatious show of his own wealth and luxurious life. At first, Daisy laughs and gasps with glee, but soon enough she is sobbing into one of the shirts. Aloud, she says how beautiful the shirts are, but underneath her words is a subtext of dread and shame. Underneath her love of Gatsby is Daisy's knowledge that they can never be together, that their love and affection is doomed, and that no amount of riches and beautiful shirts can bring them together.
More than the fact that their love is doomed, Gatsby also harbors some ill will towards Daisy, whom he feels betrayed him by not waiting for him to come back from the war. While their love has seemed dewy and hopeful until now, a return to the innocence of their youthful romance, Gatsby evidently still resents Daisy for having other boyfriends, and for marrying Tom before Gatsby returned from the war. Both of the lovers have their own particularly incompatible flaws: Daisy was inconstant, while Gatsby is possessive and grudge-holding.
Subdividing the dramatic plot arc of the film are Gatsby's lavish and raucous parties. In between scenes of great tension and melodrama, we see wild festive affairs complete with drunken hallucinating flappers, people dancing the Charleston, and eccentric late night antics. On the night that Tom and Daisy attend a Gatsby party, guests dance the Charleston in the large fountain in front of Gatsby's house, and champagne flows freely. Director Jack Clayton stages gigantic scenes of period indulgence, and every costume, feather, song, and set piece reflects the decadence of 1920s Long Island.
This part of the film establishes the story of Jay Gatsby as a tender love story. With dreamy and lilting string music, pastel costumes, and soft-filtered shots of Gatsby and Daisy, Jack Clayton shows the connection between the two lovers, investing the viewer in their reunion. Rather than an ill-fated affair, the story of Gatsby and Daisy feels like a story of two soulmates finally able to love one another with abandon. We see them lying beside a koi pond, their faces closes to one another in the reflection of the water, and then talking and enjoying themselves on the lawn. Their love seems almost utopian in how picturesque and amorous it is.
