Are
you asking yourself: How can The Great Gatsby be called a film noir? I
asked myself that very question when I learned that Kino Lorber has recently
been publishing Blu-ray box sets of films noir, and—to my great surprise—the
1949 version of The Great Gatsby, starring Alan Ladd, is included in set
number XXVI (published in 2025). I was also surprised when I first learned
several months ago that there was even a film version of the novel starring
Ladd.
I have never been a
big fan of categories, but this entry in the film noir category was a
surprise—but only at first. The story of The Great Gatsby is always
presented as a romance for the ages; that is the way it is presented in the
only other screen adaptation that I have seen, the 1974 version starring Robert
Redford and Mia Farrow. And it has been a long time since I read F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s novel, which is the basis for the film, of course. Seeing the film
inspired me to reread the novel, and it is decidedly more noir than romantic.
But even before rereading the novel, I began to see that there really are noir
elements in the 1949 film.
This article about The Great Gatsby contains spoilers for
both the film and the novel. The Blu-ray version of the 1949 film comes with commentary
by author and film historian Paul Talbot,
who points out that the film deviates from the plot of the novel in some
important ways. More on this later.
The film starts with a shot of two
people (Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker) walking in a cemetery. They stop at a
grave marked “Jay Gatsby, 1896–1928, Proverbs 14:12.” Nick Carraway recites the
proverb: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death.” The graveside conversation between Carraway and Jordan
prompts an extended flashback. Most of the film is flashback (one of the
hallmarks of noir), and viewers are first taken back to the Jazz Age,
Prohibition, drinking, parties, and bootlegging via a sequence that is a bit of
a history lesson and an introduction to the source of Jay Gatsby’s wealth.
Gatsby made his millions bootlegging
during Prohibition. Once he has his fortune, he shows up in East Egg, Long
Island, with his business associates, his bootlegging buddies, Myron Lupus and
Klipspringer, to look at an empty mansion, which Gatsby buys almost on the
spot. The property that Gatsby buys is backed by a smaller property with a
cottage on it. The realtor tells Gatsby that someone named Nick Carraway lives
there.
Carraway shows up at one of Gatsby’s
lavish weekend parties because he wants to introduce himself after receiving a
party invitation. He is one of the very few to receive such an invitation.
Gatsby welcomes one and all, including strangers, invited or not, to his
parties. When Carraway and Gatsby meet for the first time, Gatsby talks of his
past in another flashback (this one would be a flashback within a flashback).
Jimmy Gatz is his real name, and he lived in the Midwest, on the shores of Lake
Superior. He saved a rich man’s (Dan Cody’s) yacht from being destroyed because
it was anchored over a reef. Cody took a liking to Gatsby and invited him to
work on his yacht and travel around the world, an invitation that Gatsby
accepted.
After finishing his story about his
past, Gatsby wants to know if Carraway is related to the Buchanans. Carraway
confirms that he is Daisy’s second cousin. Gatsby wants Carraway to arrange a
meeting between himself and Daisy, and he offers to throw some business his way
as a quid pro quo. The arrangement is a almost a more like a business transaction
for Gatsby that Carraway finds offensive.
Nick Carraway next visits Tom and
Daisy Buchanan in their house across the channel from Gatsby’s place. Gatsby
chose his mansion specifically to be near Daisy. Daisy and Tom argue in the
next room after Tom goes there to take a call because Daisy suspects that Tom
is having an affair. While Tom and Daisy are in the next room, behind closed
doors, Jordan Baker (whom Nick meets for the first time during this visit)
tells Nick that Tom is indeed having an affair. (Viewers learn later that he is
having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, the wife of the local gas station owner.)
She also tells him not to be so smug about arranging a meeting between Daisy
and Jay Gatsby. Nick is surprised to learn from Jordan that Daisy and Jay
already know each other. In another flashback, Jordan tells Carraway how Daisy
and Jay met and how she met and married Tom Buchanan.
Jordan Baker arranges the afternoon
tea for the meeting between Daisy and Jay at Nick Carraway’s cottage without
telling Nick. He is angry about the deception, but the meeting goes well, in
spite of the original awkwardness. Gatsby invites Daisy and Nick to see his
mansion, even though Nick has already attended a party or two there. But this
excursion gives Nick a chance to meet Klipspringer, who is waiting to play the
piano at Jay’s bidding. Klipspringer tells Nick how he knows Gatsby (another
flashback within a flashback). Klipspringer served under Gatsby during World
War I. After the war, when the two arrived in New York City, Gatsby read the
Buchanans’ wedding announcement in a newspaper. He is despondent, but he learns
through a telegram that he has inherited some money from Dan Cody’s estate, and
he and Klipspringer eventually go into the bootlegging business with Myron
Lupus.
Daisy and Tom Buchanan arrive at Jay
Gatsby’s next party, mostly at Daisy’s urging, which is prompted by her
curiosity after seeing him at Nick’s. Nick Carraway is a guest at the party
that night, too. Gatsby is proud of the famous people who are his guests, but
Tom says that he doesn’t see anyone that he knows. He is very dismissive of the
party and calls it a circus. While Jay and Daisy dance, Tom asks Nick how Daisy
knows Gatsby (Tom is also dismissive of Gatsby, calling him “that egg”). Nick
asks Tom if it is true that he is having an affair. Tom’s reply: “It’s just for
the laughs, you know.”
Jay wants to know if Daisy has told
Tom that she plans on leaving him, and she hasn’t because she is confused. She
tells Jay to come to her place the next day. Daisy and Tom Buchanan leave the
party, and Nick advises Jay to give it up before it is too late: He doesn’t
think that Daisy will ever leave her husband. Jay is convinced otherwise. (It
seemed to me, in the film and in the novel, that Daisy tells men what they want
to hear in the moment and that she isn’t sure of her own feelings.)
When Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby
arrive at the Buchanans house the next day, Daisy suggests that she, Jay, Tom,
Nick, and Jordan drive to New York City. Jay and Daisy drive his car; Nick,
Jordan and Tom (with Tom at the wheel) drive Jordan’s car. While in New York
City, the group rents a hotel room, and Tom Buchanan confronts Jay Gatsby. He
knows that Jay made his money as a bootlegger, but Jay points out that Tom buys
his illegal alcohol from him and other bootleggers (this is Prohibition, and
all alcohol is illegal). Thus, they are both breaking the law. Tom then makes
his case to Daisy for remaining her husband, but Daisy remains confused.
Daisy drives Jay Gatsby’s car back
to Long Island from New York City. On the way, she swerves to avoid a truck and
doesn’t see Myrtle Wilson running toward the road. She hits and kills Myrtle in
a tragic accident. Daisy passes out from hysteria at the wheel, and Jay is
forced to commandeer the car. He stops it, moves Daisy to the passenger seat,
takes the wheel, and leaves the scene of the accident. Myrtle’s husband George
sees the whole thing, but he insists to the police officer who is investigating
the accident that the sun was in his eyes and that he didn’t see anything. He
wants to find and kill the person responsible.
When Jay and Daisy return to the
Buchanan mansion, Daisy is hysterical about what happened. Jay takes charge and
insists that they tell everyone, including the police, that he was the one
driving. Daisy agrees to do what Jay wants. When Jordan, Nick, and Tom return,
Tom convinces his wife to go along with Jay’s version of events, even though
she admitted to him, in front of Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker, that she was
the one behind the wheel. On the way home, outside the Buchanans’ windows, Jay
overhears Daisy’s betrayal. Nick is appalled by Daisy and Tom Buchanan’s
behavior, and disagrees with Jordan when she tries to convince him that Tom’s
idea is the right thing to do for Daisy.
George Wilson comes to the
Buchanans’ home with the intention of killing Tom. Tom tells him that he is
mistaken, that it was not his car that hit and killed his wife Myrtle. George
Wilson leaves to look for the other car, the one with the damage that Tom
describes. Tom does not call Jay Gatsby to warn him.
The next day, George Wilson finds
the damaged car in Gatsby’s garage, and he assumes that Gatsby is responsible
for his wife’s death. He shows up at Gatsby’s private pool and shoots and kills
Gatsby, much to Nick’s horror, who is there and witnesses everything. Police
sirens are heard on the soundtrack, and viewers can assume that George Wilson
will be arrested for killing Gatsby.
It is hard to see why
Gatsby held Daisy in such high regard, unless one considers his second
obsession: He wanted to be in Daisy’s social and financial class. He felt that
it was the only way to win her back. But she didn’t return his affection, and
Gatsby failed to see that. The novel and the film have all the makings of noir:
flashbacks, murder, suicide, betrayal, obsession. The 1949 version starring
Alan Ladd emphasizes those noir points and thus is faithful to the novel’s main
ideas, which are more noir than I ever remembered from my initial reading of The
Great Gatsby, probably in high school.
As I mentioned, the Blu-ray commentary is provided by author and film
historian Paul Talbot, who points out some of the differences between the 1941
film and Fitzgerald’s novel. This was especially interesting for me because I
reread the novel soon after seeing the 1949 film version. Here are just some of
the points that Talbot makes in his commentary:
◊ The film’s copyright expired in 2021, and a physical
re-release was allowed in the United States.
◊ The film opened abroad in London and in Edinburg,
Scotland, before opening in New York City.
◊ The film was not a flop, but it was a critical and box
office disappointment. It played in theaters until 1952, then disappeared. In
2012, a restored version was shown at film noir festivals.
◊ There are no places called East Egg or West Egg, the two
main locations in the story. The locations may be based on Great Neck, Long
Island, New York.
◊ In the film, Jay Gatsby drives a Duesenberg, among
others. It was the most expensive car in the United States at the time.
Gatsby’s car is a 1928 Model J convertible coupe. Gatsby’s car is not specified
in the novel.
◊ Duesenberg Automobile & Motors Company, Inc., in
Indianapolis, Indiana, manufactured cars that were custom made for each
customer. At the time, each car cost about $13,000 ($230,000 in 2025 dollars).
The cost of a family car averaged $500. Duesenberg
Automobile & Motors Company, Inc. went bankrupt in 1937. The cars fell out
of favor, but today, they are collector’s items. In 2018, a Duesenberg owned by
Gary Cooper sold for $22 million.
◊ Klipspringer is a freeloader in the novel. In the film,
he is a longtime friend of Jay Gatsby’s. They served together in World War I.
◊ In the novel, Tom Buchanan tells Wilson that Gatsby’s car
killed Myrtle, and he doesn’t try to stop Wilson from going after Gatsby. Daisy
feels no remorse for Myrtle’s or Gatsby’s deaths, and she never admits that she
was behind the wheel when Myrtle was killed.
◊ In the film, Daisy and Tom Buchanan are softened to
appease the censors: Manslaughter couldn’t go unpunished.
◊ In the novel, Gatsby never overhears Daisy betraying him
by going back to her husband Tom.
◊ In the novel, Wilson kills himself after shooting and
killing Gatsby. In the film, the suicide never happens because of the censors
(no suicide in any film). Instead, viewers hear the police sirens and can
assume that Wilson will be arrested and tried for killing Gatsby.
For more
information about the novel at Wikipedia, click here.
I did reread the
novel—twice! It is an absorbing story, but not because of the obsessive
infatuation that Jay Gatsby holds for Daisy Buchanan. The love that Gatsby
professes for Daisy is a subplot, even though it is the motivation for
everything that he does. Gatsby is involved, it seems, in many different lines
of work. He is a bootlegger, a gambler, a swindler. But he ends up as a symbol
of hope for the narrator Nick Carraway, who is the main character. The
Buchanans are callous, indifferent, quick to scorn others for the same things
they do themselves. Tom Buchanan is unfaithful and violent; Daisy Buchanan is
disloyal, irresponsible, incapable of commitment.
The novel also raises
another point for me: How well do we really know another person? Nick Carraway
seems satisfied that he knew Jay Gatsby well by the end of the novel, and he had
even come to admire him, which was certainly not the case throughout the novel.
The turning point came for Carraway when he saw how Gatsby handled the car
accident. Gatsby was willing to take the blame for the accident and for Myrtle
Wilson’s death, even though Daisy Buchanan was the one driving the car at the
time. Carraway admired Gatsby’s capacity for hope (it’s more like
self-delusion), even though Daisy wouldn’t have taken responsibility if she
could avoid it, no matter the consequences for anyone else.
The one person that
Nick sees consistently throughout the novel is Tom Buchanan, and Tom is the one
character who is predictable for readers, too. When Nick sees Tom again for the
first time since their college years, he thinks that he hasn’t changed at all.
He describes Tom as still having the body of the football player that he was in
college: “It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body” (page 8).
Tom is cruel in the film, too. It would be harder to trust Tom Buchanan than
Jay Gatsby, in spite of the illegal activities Gatsby pursues.
May 1, 1949, London, England;
June 6, 1949, Edinburg, Scotland; July 13, 1949, New York City, release dates
• Directed by Elliott Nugent •
Screenplay by Richard Maibaum, Cyril Hume •
Based on the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitgerald, the
play The Great Gatsby by Owen Davis
• Music by Robert Emmett
Dolan •
Edited by Ellsworth Hoagland
• Cinematography by John F. Seitz
Alan Ladd
as Jay Gatsby • Betty Field as Daisy Buchanan •
Macdonald Carey as Nick Carraway
• Ruth Hussey as Jordan
Baker •
Barry Sullivan as Tom Buchanan
• Shelley Winters as Myrtle
Wilson • Howard Da Silva as George Wilson •
Elisha Cook Jr. as Klipspringer
• Ed Begley as Myron Lupus •
Henry Hull as Dan Cody • Carole Mathews as Ella Cody •
Walter Greaza as Kinsella • Tito Vuolo as Mavromichaelis • Jack
Lambert as Reba • Ray Teal as Bob, the police officer •
Diane Nance as Pamela Buchanan
• Nicholas Joy as the guest
Distributed
by Paramount Pictures • Produced by Paramount Pictures
Blu-ray
title: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXVI, published by Kino
Lorber, KL Studio Classics, 2025
The page reference(s) in
this article refer to The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (New
York: Modern Library, 2021).
