78 years ago...
Gone With the Wind (1939)
Director: Victor Fleming (George Cukor & Sam Wood)
Country: United States
Length: 238 minutes (4-hours)
Type: Drama, Romance
This was my second viewing of
'Gone With the Wind' and I liked it more this time. Although three famous Directors worked on it, the giant vision was that of
Producer David O. Selznick. The tyrannical Selznick was reported to have gobbled Speed "like popcorn" to cope with mounting the most expensive, longest and highest-grossing (when adjusted for inflation) Hollywood film ever made. I find some of the production stories more entertaining than the film. Like co-star
Clark Gable threatening to walk from the picture unless the backstage facilities were desegregated. He was successful in that case but his threat to boycott the Atlanta Premiere when he learned the black cast members were not invited, was sadly ignored.
Hattie McDaniel did win the first Oscar for a person of colour as the plantation matron "Mammy".
The racial dimensions of the film itself are still controversial. It's far from the hateful propaganda of something like
'Birth of a Nation' but it is still highly questionable. It paints slavery in the Deep-South plantations as a wonderful idyllic period of happiness for all. The only time we see anybody in chains or being maltreated is later in the picture, when it's a row of white convicts. It's the only time in the whole 4-hours when anybody even questions the morality of slavery but the film concludes it was fine because they were treated well. The very few "Yankee" characters are all shown as uncaring thieves, murderers and (probable) rapists. I can never understand why early Hollywood seemed hell-bent on fermenting another Civil War, mere decades after the last one.
This is an oldskool 4-hour
Epic, so it's got an Overture, Entr'acte, Exit-Music and an Intermission, which neatly breaks the story in half. Just before the fall of the Confederacy and just after. Main character
Scarlett O'Hara (
Vivien Leigh) is introduced to us as a selfish, spiteful and petulant Southern debutante who wants anything as long as she can't have it. The lead being so unlikable is one of the factors that makes 'Gone With the Wind' hard to fully enjoy. After the Intermission Scarlett has lost everything and the grit and determination she shows clawing it all back at least gives us a spark of admiration for her, even if we still think she is a horrid person. One could almost see this as a feminist tale, out of the ashes of the fall, it's the women who rebuild the families. The men (with the exception of Rhett) have all become senile, depressed, war-wounded, or generally ineffectual. That said, there is a troubling part where it's implied Rhett intends to rape Scarlett and we cross-fade to her in bed the next morning beaming with satisfied joy.
The
Technicolor images are incredibly beautiful, including some long pull-back crane shots and painterly mattes. The colours are so rich, it's like they were painting with light.
Max Steiner's lush romantic 'Tara's Theme' is rightly one of the most famous and beloved pieces of music in all of Cinema. Clark Gable is like a force of nature as the tempestuous
Rhett Butler. The movie is problematic but everybody should see it at least once, if only to learn where quoteable lines like
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" and
"...afterall, tomorrow is another day" come from. 'Gone With the Wind' really is a cinematic spectacle.
Another Jean Gabin film next. Fantastique!