Moviola > Films > Gone With the Wind

Gone With the Wind (PG)   238 mins

"The most magnificent picture ever!"

Hailed by both critics and audiences as one of the finest films ever made, Victor Fleming's four hour adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's massive novel takes us through the Civil War through the story of Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh), and her romantic involvement with chivalrous but unresponsive Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) and passionate but disreputable Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).  Selfish, scheming and manipulative, she survives everything that life throws at her and at the very end finds strength in the reflection that tomorrow is another day.

As an example of filmmaking craft, Gone With the Wind is still astonishing. Several directors worked on the film; George Cukor incurred Clark Gable's dislike and was replaced by Victor Fleming, who collapsed from nervous exhaustion and was relieved by Sam Wood and Cameron Menzies. The real auteur was the producer, David O. Selznick,  who understood that the key to mass appeal was the linking of melodrama with state-of-the-art production values. Some of the individual shots still have the power to leave us breathless, including the burning of Atlanta, the flight to Tara and the "street of dying men" shot, as Scarlett wanders into the street and the camera pulls back until the whole Confederacy seems to lie broken and bleeding as far as the eye can see.

"If the central drama of Gone With the Wind is the rise and fall of a sexual adventuress, the counterpoint is a slanted but passionate view of the Old South. Unlike most historical epics, Gone With The Wind has a genuine sweep, a convincing feel for the passage of time. It shows the South before, during and after the war, all seen through Scarlett's eyes. And Scarlett is a Southerner. So was Margaret Mitchell. The movie signals its values in the printed narration that opens the film, in language that seems astonishing in its bland, unquestioned assumptions: 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 of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind."  Roger Ebert

www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/

Last modified: 02-Apr-2007

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