It's just terrible. Seriously, it's the worst movie I've seen since committing to this scratch off poster project. Now before I surrender all credibility as a film critic Gone With the Wind is praise worthy in a lot of aspects. Admittedly, the imagery is beautiful; the hypersaturated colors of the early color technology are evocative of tone and themes of the film. The performances are spectacular with every character being expertly cast and expertly performed. Even for being an excessive 4 hours the movie is well paced doesn't even drag the slightest bit until the last hour and a half. Additionally production design and value are just as lush as the colors. Every set, costume, and light is expertly produced and absolutely gorgeous and effective. The writing is smart and witty with a strong thematic core and believable complete characters. In this arena it really is no surprise this is considered one of the finest movies ever produced. I've deliberately avoided talking about the plot or themes because that is what kneecaps the film and destroys any hope of having an enjoyable experience. It turns what should be an effective, evocative, historical romance epic into an explicitly painful and horrific experience. In order to ensure I don't forget anything I'm going to divide the movie in to two distinct parts (something the movie itself does in its structure): the civil war half and the Scarlett/Rhett romance half.
The Civil War Half:
"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..."
This is the title card that opens Gone With the Wind, and sets the tone really well. From this moment you know EXACTLY what you're getting into and the point where the non-masochistic modern viewer would shut the movie off and not waste their next 4 hours. Alas, me, in my hubris, decided I could tough this out. Lets take a moment to analyze this sentence by sentence so we can better understand this film's project: "There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South..." This specifies the setting with a very positive language that portends the words to come. "Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow..." This is where the "fun" begins. The positively charged language is laid on sickeningly thick here. This could be mistaken for innocent nostalgia but has the obvious effect of glorifying a place and period that existed on the backs of a violently and horrifically oppressed minority. Further the suggestion of Gallantry having taken it's last bow suggests that this lost past holds value greater than that of modern society. "Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave..." I sincerely hope I don't have to explain why this sentence is horrifically worded, but I will anyway for completion's sake. By mentioning slavery in the same breath and as part of the same list as the positively connotative "Knights and their Ladies Fair" Gone With the Wind at best suggests that slavery is an indivisible part of an ideal past, and at worst suggests slavery is part of the reason this past was ideal. Either idea is abhorrent. Slavery is indeed an indivisible part of the time, however it is that very indivisibility that precludes the possibility of "the Old South" being anything other than a horrific stain on American history. "Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind..." Aside from continuing the sickeningly positive language the utter gall of referring to the "Old South" as a "Civilization" in its own right that is "gone with the wind" is cartoonish enough to have actually elicited a bitter laugh from me when I read it the first time.
The rest of this first half of Gone With the Wind exists to support the premise expressed in this opening title-card. The scenery is gorgeous, the colors lush and warm, the people friendly and generous, and the slaves are happy. Nostalgia is generally considered a benign and normal feeling, and for the most part this is the case. That doesn't mean it should be defended if this nostalgia is masking or, more dangerously, idealizing, horrific, outright evil, institutions, events and people. The movie backpedals on some of this idealism when it begins depicting the events of the civil war from the civilian perspective. Gone With the Wind takes a strong anti-war stance throughout most of the middle hours of the film. It even seemingly rips scenes directly from All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) especially with a few scenes in a church turned makeshift war hospital. The similarity between these scenes from these two movies highlights a problem I felt rather than understood while watching the film. All Quiet on the Western Front was an incredibly emotional experience; the horror of the first world war was expertly replicated in grounded, realistic, sounds and images. Gone With the Wind slathers the screen in a thick miasma of Hollywood schmaltz that attempts to forcibly wring emotions from you. It loses all sense of the real plunging it's audience into a fake, manufactured world where "the Old South" was the last bastion of good old American values, and family pride, and its the evil northerners and freed slaves that took that away from us. It's anti-war message seemingly attempts to mask its true theme but the conclusion is that not that the slave states were supporting an unethical institution and shouldn't have attempted to leave the union, but rather that the loyal states should have just left well enough alone and let people own other people. I could go on and describe some direct examples of how exactly Gone With the Wind employs its Hollywood schmaltz, but frankly my readers, I don't give a damn. To do so would be to be just as blunt, repetitive and tedious as the film itself. Gone With the Wind's first half is just that one note. Narratively, it exists only to setup the lead character, Scarlett, and her emotional arc. Speaking of tedious...
The Second Half:
Scarlett begins the movie as an insufferably entitled annoying brat, and it's really easy to hate her, and Gone With the Wind wants you to. It's just the beginning of her character arc. It is through the tribulations of the civil war and the reconstruction period afterward the tempers her into becoming an independent woman who is willing to work for what she wants. If that was the end of the story Gone With the Wind would be an admirable almost feminist movie, but there are still two hours left. This is where Clark Gable's Rhett becomes relevant. He has been peppered throughout the movie up to the midway point as an idealized masculine figure that is understood in the logic of the film to be a goal for Scarlett to work towards. Not that Scarlett herself recognizes this, pining after another guy named Ashley. The narrative thrust of the second half of the movie is exploring the turbulent romance between Scarlett and Rhett. I say turbulent but laborious is more accurate. Both characters rapidly oscillate between "I love you", and "I hate you" multiple times throughout the second half; sometimes within individual scenes. This is clearly an attempt to generate enough drama to fill out another movie's entire run time, and a will they/won't they tension, if well executed, can absolutely carry a film of the length of the last half of Gone With the Wind, But it comes off only as a tedious exercise that shows more hate rather than love. In order to explore this it's useful to focus on Scarlett and Rhett individually.
Scarlett grows a lot throughout the extensive run time of Gone With the Wind. Her character at the beginning of the second half is a woman who is willing to put forward hard work and a ton of energy into ensuring the comfort and safety of her family. This is admirable growth for a female character in a 30's movie so of course the movie sees this as a problem that needs to be solved. In order to accomplish this the movie subtly repositions Scarlett's self assured "get it done" attitude into being a manipulative and promiscuous shrew who uses her sexuality to manipulate men into doing whatever she wants. She constantly marries people out of convenience to gain personal wealth or to get closer to Ashley, and she is repeatedly shown to not feel any emotion when any of her husbands die. This is not, and isn't intended to be, a representation of a "strong female character". Rather she is shown by the movie to be a woman broken by the horror of the civil war and must be taught by a strong male character to be feminine again.
Speaking of that male character Rhett is charming, clean cut, friendly, and a completely slimy and despicable individual. Have some quotes which should speak for themselves:
"No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you."
"I want you to faint. This is what you were meant for."
"I've always thought a good lashing with a buggy whip would benefit you immensely."
"Observe my hands my dear...I could tear you to pieces with them. And I'd do it if it'd take Ashley out of your mind forever. But it wouldn't. So I'll remove him from your mind this way: I'll put my hands so, one on each side of your head, and I'll smash your skull between them like a walnut. And that'll block him out."
These were all spoken by Rhett to Scarlett. I was expecting some degree of casual sexism from the male characters in a movie from the 30's, I know far too much about film history not to, but especially the last quote goes far beyond what I, as an educated film student, expect from even this era of film. And actions speak louder than words. In the second half of the film Rhett, forces Scarlett to go to a party specifically so she can be humiliated by her peers due to rumors of adultery, even going so far as to dress her up to fit the part. He insists complete ownership over their daughter even remarking that shes the first person he's ever "owned". He "accidentally" causes Scarlett to suffer a miscarriage. It is also heavily implied that he rapes her. It is not lost on me that this overtly abusive behavior was more accepted and expected in the 1930's but the overt qualities of the abuse depicted in Gone With the Wind go ridiculously far beyond what I've observed in other films of the era and stand out as completely indefensible.
Both Rhett and Scarlett are despicable individuals who, quite frankly, deserve each other so that they don't inflict themselves on other people. They constantly verbally abuse and manipulate each other and there is absolutely no love between them. This seems less like two people trying to discover how much they love each other and more like two people trying to figure out who hates the other more. Hardly a searing romance of the silver screen and more like a tragic unending shouting match of inconsistent hate.
There is SO much more to get into with this film. The subtle defense of the KKK, the racial stereotyping, why Hattie McDaniel's Oscar winning performance is still racist, the condemnation of the "yankees", and so so much more. Gone With the Wind is so dense with offal it is sickening for any audience to sit through, and I have neither the time nor the will power to get into all of it, but I want to leave you with one final point. Some might think it "unfair" to judge a movie by the ethical qualities of its themes and not the craft behind that, however, whether calculated or not, every element in any film conspires to support its themes. Regardless of how well executed those elements are when they are supporting ideas as destructive, dangerous, and quite frankly evil as those of Gone With the Wind they become infected with that terrible purpose and as indivisible as slavery is to the "Old South"
Had a difficult and heavy one this week, and I hope you understand the necessity to delay this post until I've had some time to digest the movie. Next Tuesday we have something no less politically charged but a HELL of a lot more fun. Check back then for a look at The Great Dictator (1940)
(gonna put in the actual movie posters for the foreseeable future. the pictures I was taking of my scratch off poster looked terrible)
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