Pammy is supposed to be about five, right? At least in this version of the film, as played by Patsy Kinset, she was. It's only 1922, and the US didn't send troops to Europe until 1917. Jay and Daisy were together right up to that time. Was Daisy supposed to have married Tom so suddenly because she was pregnant? The way Gatsby looks at her when Pammy is introduced makes me wonder.
I think you are right. There was a long uncomfortable silence
Well in the book I don't think this was implied at all. It describes Gatsby's look as a look of realization that the daughter did exist. It's like he may know Daisy has a daughter, but he didn't really think about it until actually seeing her daughter. It may have made him a tad uncomfortable knowing she actually had a family? Or maybe he wished it was their daughter?
Also in the film Gatsby says it has been 8 years since he last saw Daisy. I noticed this because I just finished reading the book, and in the book it has been 5 years. Not sure why they changed that in the film. So if that is true, then it can't be Gatsby's daughter because she is too young.
The film is set in 1925 whereas the book is set in 1922. The US entered WWI in 1917 so those numbers all work. Setting the film in 1925 allowed, for one thing, for the diagetic use of songs like "What'll I Do" (written in 1923) and "When You And I Were Seventeen" (1924).
Pammy is only three in that scene in the book and Saisybhasnt seen Gatsby in five years, so no, she couldn't have been Gatsby's child. But Daisy makes a point of saying that Pammy doesn't look anything like Tom, so it is rather odd. But the Daisy was a rather odd person all around.
shareIn the book, Daisy also mentions that Pammy looks like her. However, the reason why Gatsby looks the way he does when he sees the little girl is because all that time, he had this fantasy that Daisy and Tom were married in name only, that there had never been any love or affection between them and that they had never been intimate, and seeing the child destroyed that delusion. After that, despite his attempts to get Daisy to leave Tom and say that she never loved her husband, you can see the cracks in his dream world start to form.
[deleted]