Gone with the Wind

One's perception of the film as racist rather depends on whether you look at the film within the context of its era or from a purely modern standpoint. At the time, GONE WITH THE WIND was a major advance in the portrayal of blacks on screen, for the two major black characters--Mammy and Prissy--are a far cry from the obnoxious "Stepin Fetchit" stereotypes so common in the 1930s. In later years, both Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen would be derrided for their participation in the film and accused of perpetuating stereotypes, but in fact their performances were anything but stereotypical at the time--indeed, their very power led Hollywood into a repetition of similar characters, and it was that repetition that later caused the originals to read as cliched.

The real problem with GONE WITH THE WIND is that it, like the novel on which it is based, buys into the myth of great plantations, lovely Southern belles, gallant gentlemen, and a paternalistic form of slavery. These concepts have some basis in fact, but the vast majority of southern whites did not own plantations, much less own slaves, and those who did rarely practiced "paternalistic" slavery by any stretch of the imagination. But GONE WITH THE WIND is the myth, not the fact--and once we accept it as a highly romanticized vision of the South as it never really was, the film becomes incredibly entertaining and can still cast its spell upon the modern viewer.

The most powerful thing about the film is that it moves. Over the course of its very long run, the episodic story of the beautiful and willful Scarlett O'Hara and her rapacious drive to insulate herself from the hardships of the war never significantly drags. And the cast, from the leads to the bit players, is superior.

Margaret Michell might have created Rhett Butler with Clark Gable in mind; Vivien Leigh, a remarkable beauty and a very fine actress, was scarcely known outside England--but amazingly, when one considers the tremendous anticipation surrounding the casting of the role, she plays Scarlett with incredible success. Granted that the characters of Melanie and Ashley are rather unbelievable, but both Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard carry them off with conviction. And although they have already been mentioned, Hattie McDaniel's formidable Mammy and Butterfly McQueen's passive-aggressive and frequently hysterical Prissy are brilliant creations and more than worthy of a second mention.

True, advances in cinema technique have made some of the special effects seem dated, but the production values and art design are brilliant from throughout, and the film offers a multitude of iconographic moments: Rhett standing at the bottom of the staircase at Twelve Oaks; Scarlett caught up in a the panic during the seige of Atlanta; the tattered flag waving above the fallen troops at the train yard; the kiss between Rhett and Scarlett after the fall of Atlanta--these, yes, and many, many more.

GONE WITH THE WIND will no doubt become increasingly controversial as attitudes continue to change re race, slavery, and the Civil War--but in terms of pure cinema it is a remarkable achievement for all involved and it remains a landmark to this day. The DVD currently available offers a pristine picture and high quality sound, but I must note that the DVD has no great advantage over the current VHS release; a trailer aside, there are no bonus materials of any kind, and both are of equal quality. Strongly recommended, but with a warning: do not mistake it for fact. As I noted earlier, this is a South that never was, built on a form of slavery far removed from the slavery that actually existed. Enjoy it as a beautifully made and epic romance with a host of powerful performances--but not as history.


Near-Perfect Edition of Hollywood Classic...   December 22, 2004
Benjamin J Burgraff
177 out of 188 found this review helpful

It seems like a 'new, improved' edition of "Gone With the Wind" has appeared every couple of years, offering the 'ultimate' in picture and sound reproduction, and extras. It can become expensive keeping up, and frustrating (much like buying a classic Disney DVD, when you know a more complete "Special Edition" will soon render your "First Time on Video" copy obsolete), but the new GWTW Four-Disc Collector's Edition most assuredly deserves a place in your collection.

First off, the picture and sound quality is astonishing. Warner's Ultra-Resolution process, which 'locks' the three Technicolor strips into exact alignment, provides a clarity and 'crispness' to the images that even the 1939 original print couldn't achieve. You'll honestly believe your TV is picking up HD, whether you're HD-ready, or not! This carries over to the Dolby Digital-remastered sound, as well. All of the tell-tale hiss and scratchiness of the opening credit title music, still discernable in the last upgrade, is gone, replaced by a richness of tone that will give your home theater a good workout. (Listen to the brass in this sequence, and you'll notice what I'm talking about...)

The biggest selling point of this edition is, of course, the two discs of additional features offered, and these are, in general, superb. Beginning with the excellent "Making of a Legend" (narrated by Christopher Plummer), Disc Three offers fascinating overviews about the film, the amazing restoration, footage from the 1939 Premiere (and the bittersweet 1961 Civil War Centennial reunion of Selznick, Leigh, and de Havilland), glimpses of Gable and Leigh with dubbed voices for the foreign-language versions, the international Prologue (tacked on to explain the Civil War to foreign audiences), and a 1940 MGM documentary on the "Old South" (directed by Fred Zinneman) memorable today for it's simplistic view of the time, and stereotypical portrayal of blacks.

Disc Four is a mixed bag; the long-awaited reminiscences of Olivia de Havilland are more chatty than informative (with the 90-year-old actress more interested in discussing her wardrobe than on-set tension...although a prank she pulled on Gable is amusing), and the Clark Gable Profile is superficial (A&E's biography of 'The King' is far superior). Things improve, however, with the insightful, sympathetic TCM biography of Vivien Leigh (hosted by Jessica Lange), and a WONDERFUL section devoted to brief bios of many of the GWTW supporting cast, narrated, again, by Christopher Plummer (although I wish the filmmakers would have included bios for Ward Bond, Victor Jory, Fred Crane, and George 'Superman' Reeves).

All in all, the GWTW Four-Disc Collector's Edition isn't perfect, but offers so much terrific material that it is CERTAINLY the one to own!






Technical Consideration for "Bewildered in Iowa"   November 30, 2004
D. Paul Dalton (Dallas, TX USA)
67 out of 72 found this review helpful

I do hope you'll return and revise your rating to a '5' once you digest this information:

Gone With the Wind was never released in a Widescreen version on DVD because it was never released in a Widescreen version on film. In fact, when it was released (1939), there were NO "Widescreen" movies at all -- becaues no one had yet thought about formatting movies in that way.

Through the 1940s and into the 1950s, essentially ALL movies were in the 3:4 format that we now consider to be "regular". My understanding is that those proportions originally were adopted by the film industry to roughly correspond with the proportions of viewable area for the "live" theaters extant when the film industry started. Similarly, when television arrived in the late 40s/early 50s, its screen format was determined by copying the 3:4 screen proportions of films made up to that time. By the mid-1950s, the film industry became concerned about losing its audience to TV, so various WIDESCREEN formats (CinemaScope was one; I think there was another called VistaVision; I can't remember the others offhand) were conceived by the film industry in the 1950s as a way in which the film industry could distinguish its film products from what could efficiently be shown on television screens. This was the film industry's attempt to keep audiences coming to theaters to see their movies, rather than just waiting to see movie productions on home televisions; by coming to the theater, the audience could experience something different that what television could offer.

Other "ideas" in this effort against TV included attempts to interest audiences in 3D films, as well as enhancing film audio, both by greatly improving sound range and fidelity and later by adding stereo, at a time when TVs had only a single, inexpensive speaker that didn't sound all that "hot." In fact, the creation/addition of 5.1 audio (Surround Sound) was yet another film industry effort to distinguish itself from what then was available for use in homes.

Anyway, if someone now wants to issue a "Widescreen" version of GWTW, the only way to do it (without distorting the content) would be to cut off the top and/or bottom of every frame all the way through -- just think about how THAT would look . . .


A Classic but it's NOT for everyone!   July 22, 2002
44 out of 49 found this review helpful

I used to think that this Hollywood classic was for everyone. However, after reading nearly 300 reviews of the film, I think that isn't true anymore. This movie is NOT for you IF 1) you think a movie must be as historically accurate as a history book, 2) you think a 1939 movie should reflect the values of the 21st century, 3) your attention span is so short that you must only see movies from 90-120 minutes in length, 4) you can only accept politically correct films, particularly in terms of racial issues, 5) you are so DUMB as to think widescreen movies were made before the 1950s (although to be fair, Selznik originally intended to use a special widescreen process for the so-called "burning of Atlanta" sequence but gave up on the expensive idea), 6) you can only accept computerized special effects as they appear in modern films, or 7) your idea of great acting is to be found in slasher or teen films being made these days.

GWTW is NOT a documentary on the Civil War period. It is NOT a history of slavery in America. It is NOT a story of perfect people behaving perfectly at all times.

It IS an adaptation of a novel written by a Southern woman who, as a child, sat and listened to the stories the old Confederate veterans told about the old days before, during, and after THE war. It IS a love story, probably about the novelist's grandmother, which reflects the attitudes left over from that long-ago time.

To criticize this film for so many unrelated issues is silly. It stands on its merits as a masterful film that tells of bittersweet love and lost fantasy. That it succeeds so well is a tribute to the actors and filmmakers of over sixty years ago.


Gone With the Wind: The Epic Standard   July 29, 2002
Martin Asiner (jersey city, nj United States)
22 out of 25 found this review helpful

GONE WITH THE WIND is the movie epic by which all other movies are judged. During its nearly four hours, the audience can see several movies in one: a love story, a war epic, a portrait of a self-driven woman to succeed regardless of cost, an historical saga, and the need of a displaced formerly proud people to regain their roots. Much of the sweep of Margaret Mitchell's novel is retained while losing only extraneous material. Director Victor Fleming presents a vision of the South that existed only for a precious, priviliged few. The first half centers on this ante-bellum image of a julip drinking South peopled mostly with polished gentlemen and marriage-hunting women. The dramatic focus of both halves is, of course, Scarlett O'Hara, played by Vivien Leigh in the role of a lifetime. Scarlett shows none of the monomania for success that drives her later on. Here, she is vain, flirty, and totally self-centered, except for her obsession for Ashley Wilkes, who as played by Leslie Howard, comes off as the last of a dying breed of Southern gentlemen. She throws herself at his feet, promising to love him eternally. When he rejects her, she slaps his face, now promising to despise him. As fine an actor as Leslie Howard is, he cannot set himself up as her power equal. For that, Clark Gable enters as Rhett Butler, a man who sees the world as it is and people as they are. In nearly the same scene, he announces to all the Southern gentlemen present that their beloved South has no chance to win the war. Moments later, he informs Scarlett that he will have her as surely as the South will lose the war.
As the first half proceeds, the audience can see the proud South slowly crumble under the might of the industrial North. This crumbling is measured in blighted landscapes and human lives lost. One of the most powerful scenes in any movie is the one in which Scarlett leaves the Confederate hospital because she is too spent to care for the constant influx of dead and dying men. As she emerges into the sunlight, the camera lingers on a few bodies lying in the street, then expands into a vast panorama of thousands more waiting helplessly for women like Scarlett to tend to them. It is this vision of a dying way of life that propels the first half into Scarlett's return to Tara.
Her metamorphosis from vain party girl to a driven monomania for money is punctuated by the impossibly dramatic silhouette of Scarlett ripping out shrubs and eating them raw, all the while shaking her fist at God promising Him that she will prevail.
Following the intermission, the pace of the film slows and becomes less sweep and more soap opera. Events happen in a whirl. Scarlett has one husband, then another, a child is born, a child dies, a husband leaves her. The finale of Rhett storming out into the night with his now cliched 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn,' is the final lesson that Scarlett has to learn. She has stepped on those whose only offense was to love her. Ironically, as she gains the riches that she thought she wanted more than anything else, she now sees those riches as hollow as the magnificent but empty mansion in which she now lives quite alone.
The amount of pity that the audience feels for Scarlett is a function of how they evaluate her justification for the pursuit of wealth. Scarlett may be wounded at the end, but if the audience feels a lack of pity for her, then surely they also see a woman whose bravado has stood her in good stead often during past crises. Her new solitary existence promises to be the most severe test yet of that bravado.