Underlying theme

Rating: Null/10 (22 August 2004)

Being an American who grew up in the south, I have a little extra knowledge of what the movie Gone With the Wind is about. When you talk to people in the southeastern states, sooner or later you're going to hear about the Civil War, because that subject is still under serious debate there, and there are a great number of people who are experts. Margaret Mitchell herself said that when she was a child she heard very many personal remembrances of that time, and in fact she was steeped in the living memory of the Civil War period.
The book that she wrote is a recreation of that period, and the movie is a sort of living portrait drawn from the book. Even though the very strong characters of the story occupy the center of the stage, still the background is just as important, being the result of Margaret Mitchell's need to give expression to all she knew about the agony of the Civil War, still living so vividly in the minds of so many people in America.