The Great Gatsby (1974)
Gatsby? What Gatsby?
Tag: The Great Gatsby
Memories of love above the city lights
cf. TV commercial, ca. 1970’s (edited)
I went in — after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove — but I don’t believe they heard a sound. They were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy’s face was smeared with tears, and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.
— The Great Gatsby
Chapter 9
cf. Art Hanson, “Student at Work at Senior High School…” (ca. 1975)
And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Chapter 4
cf. photograph by Josh Felise via Unsplash
When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was beside the curb, and she was sitting in it with a lieutenant I had never seen before. They were so engrossed in each other that she didn’t see me until I was five feet away…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Chapter 6 (Continued)
cf. photograph by Peter Mason via Unsplash
What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours?
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Because The Night” – Patti Smith
Chapter 6
cf. photograph by Skye Studios via Unsplash
Daisy and Gatsby danced…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Chapter 5
The Great Gatsby (1974)
“We’ve met before,” muttered Gatsby…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Chapter 8 (Continued)
“You weren’t so nice to me last night.”
“How could it have mattered then?”
Silence for a moment. Then:
“However — I want to see you.”
“I want to see you, too.”
“Suppose I don’t go to Southampton, and come into town this afternoon?”
“No — I don’t think this afternoon.”
“Very well.”
“It’s impossible this afternoon. Various ——”
We talked like that for a while, and then abruptly we weren’t talking any longer. I don’t know which of us hung up with a sharp click, but I know I didn’t care. I couldn’t have talked to her across a tea-table that day if I never talked to her again in this world.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Chapter 8
Polaroid photograph by Andrei Tarkovsky
It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows down-stairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day.
“I don’t think she ever loved him.” Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“You always look so cool,” she repeated.
cf. Ide Collars Advertisement (ca. 1922)
“Who wants to go to town?” demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby’s eyes floated toward her. “Ah,” she cried, “you look so cool.”
Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.
“You always look so cool,” she repeated.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”
Woodbury’s Facial Soap Advertisement (ca. 1922)
“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Into the same river you could not step twice, for other waters are flowing.”
—Heraclitus
“So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.”
cf. Eastman Kodak, “How to make good movies…” (1938) and Video: “Timescapes 001” (edited collage)
His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Gatsby walked over and stood beside her…”
J.B.B. Wellington, “The Toast” (ca. 1914)
Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.
“Daisy, that’s all over now,” he said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the truth — that you never loved him — and it’s all wiped out forever.”
She looked at him blindly. “Why — how could I love him — possibly?”
“You never loved him.”
She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing — and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.
“I never loved him,” she said, with perceptible reluctance…
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Lines on my head from that one thing she said…
Peter Frampton – “Lines On My Face”
“He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way…”
cf. H. H. Brook, “The Warning Light” (ca. 1916)
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone — he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward — and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
cf. Albertus H. Baldwin, Man Sitting on a Boat and Khürt Williams, Rodanthe Pier
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I Thought Of Daisy
“Two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon…”
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor…
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
John Sapiro 