GONE WITH THE WIND Movie Review
1939 Victor Fleming, George Cukor
Hollywood's most lavish and popular epic is really overrated. As escapism based on the Civil War, its romanticism is thick, sticky and unashamed. The on-screen crawl states as much before the film begins:
There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave. Look for it only in books for it is no more than a dream remembered … A Civilization gone with the wind.
That purple prose is a fitting introduction of a big fluffy mass of celluloid cotton candy. Deliberately or not, it's also an admission of the film's biases. It sees antebellum Georgia, the war itself, and reconstruction through the eyes of a wealthy white Southerner and never goes beyond that. As such, it may be fairly accurate in its portrait of the Southern aristocracy as a starry-eyed lot who simply could not believe that large numbers of men and weapons would be a match for their “fighting spirit” because God was on their side. The filmmakers never mention the more pertinent issue of the states' right to secede from the union, and understandably so. That's a difficult question with several answers. Who wants to deal with it? Fiddle-dee-dee. We'll think about that tomorrow.
And as for slavery, in this cinematic South, the “darkies” really don't mind it much. They're basically happy. In fact, they enthusiastically join in to help dig trenches for the Confederate troops, and after the war, they don't want to leave the plantation. Those who do leave, like Big Sam (Everett Brown), return as soon as they're shown the error of their ways. The film's racist attitudes are essentially identical to those of Birth of a Nation, though without the more bitter aspects. Without ever mentioning the Klan by name or showing its terrorist violence, one key scene tacitly endorses those tactics.
When director Victor Fleming (and uncredited George Cukor) turn their attention to the war and its immediate effects, they create the most involving and memorable scenes in the film. Those are the ones set in the hospital, the long newspaper list of the names of the men killed in action at Gettysburg, the burning of Atlanta, and the famous shot of Scarlett crossing the train tracks where the camera pulls back to reveal the thousands of dying and wounded.
Though the portrait that is painted of the destruction and devastation left in the wake of Sherman's march through Georgia isn't quite as rosy as the rest of the film, it's not exactly hard-bitten, either. Given the film's romantic underpinnings, that part of it probably shouldn't be too explicit. Scarlett's (Vivien Leigh) lone encounter with a Yankee deserter (Paul Hurst) is over almost before it begins. (If only he hadn't holstered his pistol … )
Even though it is Hollywood's most famous look at the Civil War, Gone with the Wind finally fails as a Civil War film because it misses the central fact of the pivotal event in American history, and that is the bitter divisions that the war left between individuals and between states. For all of its flaws, Birth of a Nation comes much closer to that inescapable truth. This film and its many fans are more interested in the characters, as relentlessly one-dimensional as they are, than in the war and what it did to America. And even a critic who dislikes the film as much as I do has to admit that as a big, gaudy, superficial soap opera, it's a fine one to wallow in.
Cast: Clark Gable (Rhett Butler), Vivien Leigh (Scarlett O'Hara), Olivia de Havilland (Melanie Hamilton), Leslie Howard (Ashley Wilkes), Thomas Mitchell (Gerald O'Hara), Hattie McDaniel (Mammy), Butterfly McQueen (Prissy), Evelyn Keyes (Suellen O'Hara), Harry Davenport (Dr. Meade), Jane Darwell (Dolly Merriwether), Ona Munson (Belle Watling), Barbara O'Neil (Ellen), William “Billy” Bakewell (Mounted officer), Rand Brooks (Charles Hamilton), Ward Bond (Tom), Laura Hope Crews (Aunt Pittypat Hamilton), Yakima Canutt (Renegade), George Reeves (Stuart Tarleton), Marjorie Reynolds (Guest at Twelve Oaks), Ann Rutherford (Careen O'Hara), Victor Jory (Jonas Wilkerson), Carroll Nye (Frank Kennedy), Paul Hurst (Yankee deserter), Isabel Jewell (Emmy Slattery), Cliff Edwards (Reminiscent soldier), Eddie Anderson (Uncle Peter), Oscar Polk (Pork), Eric Linden (Amputation case), Violet Kem-ble-Cooper (Bonnie's nurse), Fred Crane (Brent Tarleton), Howard Hickman (John Wilkes), Leona Roberts (Mrs. Meade), Cammie King (Bonnie Blue Butler), Mary Anderson (Maybelle Merriwether), Frank Faylen (Doctor's aide), Everett Brown (Big Sam); Written by: Sidney Howard; Cinematography by: Ray Rennahan; Music by: Max Steiner; Technical Advisor: Susan Myrink. Producer: David O. Selznick, MGM. Awards: Academy Awards '39: Best Actress (Leigh), Best Color Cinematography, Best Director (Fleming), Best Film Editing, Best Interior Decoration, Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (McDaniel); American Film Institute (AFI) '98: Top 100, National Film Registry '89; New York Film Critics Awards '39: Best Actress (Leigh); Nominations: Academy Awards '39: Best Actor (Gable), Best Sound, Best Special Effects, Best Supporting Actress (de Havilland), Best Original Score. Budget: 3.9M. Running Time: 231 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Closed Caption, DVD.