A Timeless Classic

Rating: Null/10 (10 February 2002)

Do I think this is the greatest movie ever made? No, but it is in the top five. The first half of the film is one of the most gripping of all time, but thereafter it drags on interminably. Had interest such as the first half been kept up for the second half, then I would say this is the greatest film ever made. Fleming never loses sight of the book. Mitchell's book is not a happy one, for the South or for the main characters. Ashley Wilkes may be a brave soldier, but he is a weak vacillating man, never able to completely break away from Scarlett; Rhett Butler, never able to win Scarlett's love until it is too late for both of them, becomes a fleshy topor in the end. Much like the South under Reconstruction as the Cavaliers give way to the carpetbaggers. Only after Melanie dies does Scarlett realize, as she sees Ashley for real, that she is free to love Rhett; as the South realizes it must adjust to a new paradigm. One of the most gripping scenes in all filmdom opens the door for the complete degradation of the south and its aristocratic cavaliers: The scene in the Atlanta rail yards with the hundreds of wounded and dying men set against the tattered Confederate battle standard..what a scene! Despite the dragging part of Confederate post partum agonies, this is a film that one can see over and over again, especially the war scenes and the destruction of the only true aristocratic civilization this country has ever known. I have always wondered just what Margaret Mitchell thought of all this up to the time she stepped in front of the automobile that took her life. A suicide? we'll never know. So we are left with the book and the magnum opus of this film which will never see a sequel that will do the original even close to justice.