Benefit
Bluelighter
Film: Gone With The Wind
I decided to watch this 4 hour mega-epic to see what all the hype was about and because I knew I could never be a genuine film snob until I'd seen it. The verdict? It's pretty good.
Gone With the Wind, David O. Selznick's brain child, is one of the most important films in the history of cinema. It is Birth of a Nation re-imagined with the racism toned down and injected with Technicolor, painting a sweeping portrait of the genesis of the modern Southern United States. But the historical context, the idealized depiction of the South before the calamity of war and its subsequent deterioration, is incidental to the heart of the film: Scarlett O'Hara, the prissy Southern Princess who needs to be kissed, often and by someone who knows how.
Vivien Leigh, who was neurotic in real life, was well cast in the part of Scarlett. She toys with all the men in the film, and appears to obey only her own selfish instincts; except for a few times when she grins and bears it and assumes the mantle of responsibility when no one else will which makes her a somewhat complex character and not nearly as one dimensional as I had thought she would be. Although the high-strungness of the character becomes a bit repetitive and... mmm.... vomit-inducing, Scarlett is still a trend-setting female character and has spawned innumerable essays by lesbian feminist scholars who are madly in love with her.
Clark Gable, the proverbial "King of Hollywood", is powerful as smooth talking, ass kicking Southern rogue Rhett Butler. For the first half of the film, he only makes short, periodic appearances. This is when the film is at its best. When he's not on the screen, you wonder where he is, and when he will show up again with his cool charm and what he will do when he gets back on the screen. The second half of the film features him prominently, and so the film feels sort of deflated because he's no longer a mysterious roving presence but a mainstay of the narrative.
Visually, the film features some stunning scenes. There is one scene in the beginning, which is then copied several times, where the camera pulls back on the silhouettes of Scarlett and her father standing under a tree on a ridge overlooking their estate, Tara. In another spectacular scene, Scarlet walks through a field of dying men as the camera pulls back to show literally thousands of extras spread out on stretchers. Considering CGI wouldn't even be thought of for 30 more years, it is undeniably impressive.
The romance between Scarlett and Rhett works because it is dysfunctional, which makes Rhett's final rejection of Scarlett so utterly wonderful. As in real life, their feelings are complicated. It's not a sanitized, one-dimensional melodramatic romantic oversimplification. They share a mutual attraction but aren't compatible on other levels, and the romance therefore shifts between passionate and terse and several times explodes in violence.
It is a wonderful Technicolor extravaganza which defined the standard for epic filmmaking. This standard would be approached and redefined during the 1950s with a rush of Biblical epics, but the Bible (especially as envisioned by Cecil B. DeMille) is nowhere near as compelling or interesting as the charm and lushness of the Southern United States of America as envisioned by David O. Selznick and his team of writers, directors, set designers and actors.
Note: go for the digitally restored version if you can, it looks great.
I decided to watch this 4 hour mega-epic to see what all the hype was about and because I knew I could never be a genuine film snob until I'd seen it. The verdict? It's pretty good.
Gone With the Wind, David O. Selznick's brain child, is one of the most important films in the history of cinema. It is Birth of a Nation re-imagined with the racism toned down and injected with Technicolor, painting a sweeping portrait of the genesis of the modern Southern United States. But the historical context, the idealized depiction of the South before the calamity of war and its subsequent deterioration, is incidental to the heart of the film: Scarlett O'Hara, the prissy Southern Princess who needs to be kissed, often and by someone who knows how.
Vivien Leigh, who was neurotic in real life, was well cast in the part of Scarlett. She toys with all the men in the film, and appears to obey only her own selfish instincts; except for a few times when she grins and bears it and assumes the mantle of responsibility when no one else will which makes her a somewhat complex character and not nearly as one dimensional as I had thought she would be. Although the high-strungness of the character becomes a bit repetitive and... mmm.... vomit-inducing, Scarlett is still a trend-setting female character and has spawned innumerable essays by lesbian feminist scholars who are madly in love with her.
Clark Gable, the proverbial "King of Hollywood", is powerful as smooth talking, ass kicking Southern rogue Rhett Butler. For the first half of the film, he only makes short, periodic appearances. This is when the film is at its best. When he's not on the screen, you wonder where he is, and when he will show up again with his cool charm and what he will do when he gets back on the screen. The second half of the film features him prominently, and so the film feels sort of deflated because he's no longer a mysterious roving presence but a mainstay of the narrative.
Visually, the film features some stunning scenes. There is one scene in the beginning, which is then copied several times, where the camera pulls back on the silhouettes of Scarlett and her father standing under a tree on a ridge overlooking their estate, Tara. In another spectacular scene, Scarlet walks through a field of dying men as the camera pulls back to show literally thousands of extras spread out on stretchers. Considering CGI wouldn't even be thought of for 30 more years, it is undeniably impressive.
The romance between Scarlett and Rhett works because it is dysfunctional, which makes Rhett's final rejection of Scarlett so utterly wonderful. As in real life, their feelings are complicated. It's not a sanitized, one-dimensional melodramatic romantic oversimplification. They share a mutual attraction but aren't compatible on other levels, and the romance therefore shifts between passionate and terse and several times explodes in violence.
It is a wonderful Technicolor extravaganza which defined the standard for epic filmmaking. This standard would be approached and redefined during the 1950s with a rush of Biblical epics, but the Bible (especially as envisioned by Cecil B. DeMille) is nowhere near as compelling or interesting as the charm and lushness of the Southern United States of America as envisioned by David O. Selznick and his team of writers, directors, set designers and actors.
Note: go for the digitally restored version if you can, it looks great.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
