GONE WITH THE WIND was a big deal when I was young in Atlanta. The film was only released every 7 years and always created excitement. It had way back at the start as well, when the films cast held a parade for the release. The film isn't about the Old South as much as it was about the way the Old South was re-invented after the Spainsh American War. The first half up to the burning of Atlanta lives up to the myth of the film, but the second half is pure 1930's soap opera.
Still, the women in Atlanta took the film very seriously - it was the character of Scarlett O'Hara they loved- the unsung woman who held the South together as it was raped, pillaged and burned.( All of which the studio was able to show and even allow the word damn to appear despite strict censorship of the day that forbade all of it). GONE WITH THE WIND was also the first time the losers in a war were shown reacting to the attacks being made on them. To this day the name Scarlett is still popular in the South!
Should GONE WITH THE WIND go the way of THE SONG OF THE SOUTH- censored and forgotten?
1. "Gone With the Wind" (1939) Go ahead, say it: The idea that this towering totem of Hollywood's Golden Age may not deserve the praise it's received over the decades is downright sacrilegious, and we should be strung up for saying so. To which we reply: When was the last time you actually watched this marathon paean to the Old South? We can appreciate what producer David O. Selznick accomplished -- after hearing the film's backstory, it's a miracle the movie even managed to get made -- but this template for every bloated spectacle made since is one creaky melodrama. Vivien Leigh's touted performance now seems drastically mannered and camp ("I'll never go hungry again!"), set pieces such as Scarlett O'Hara's tour of the Civil War battlefield stick out like sore thumbs amidst the overwrought "intimate" moments, and Victor Fleming's direction never rises above journeyman level. Even Clark Gable's charismatic Rhett Butler feels less like an actual character and more like a star simply savoring the taste of the scenery between his teeth. You can chalk up the retrograde politics to the times -- still, we dare you to sit through Butterfly McQueen's and Hattie McDaniel's scenes without wincing -- but the sheen of this capo di tutti capi of movies has worn off once and for all. For all its pomp, "Gone With the Wind" no longer blows us away. http://movies.msn.com/movies/moviesfeature/dvd/not-classic-movies?GT1=28002
