Vivien Leigh Pulls This Amazing Epic

Rating: 9/10 (9 February 2009)

Warning! Some Spoilers
"Gone With The Wind" succeeds largely on the strengths of its lead actors, and Selznic Productions were blessed to have an emotive, powerful lead in Vivien Leigh. While far from a saintly or sympathetic character, Scarlett O'Hara, the epic's protagonist, is given life through Leigh's passioned acting. While Scarlett is a conniving, mendacious person who uses people to get her way, we feel for her character thanks to Leigh's involved acting. Her facial expressions and body language add depth to the role and make her a pleasure to watch throughout the movie's nearly four-hour length.
Other great actors in the film include Olivia de Haviland as the long-suffering wife of Scarlett's love Ashley, Melanie. Hattie McDaniel also lends power to her role as Mammy, who serves as sort of a moral compass and conscience which Scarlett, lamentably, does little to follow. Clark Gable is absolutely perfect as the powerful male lead to counter Leigh's Scarlett. He convincingly portrays the roguish, tough, manly, yet sensitive and kind-hearted Rhett Butler. Still, even the character of Rhett is no match for the power of Scarlett's presence, and if one must must decide who is the better actor between Leigh and Gable, Leigh's presence is ultimately more indelible.
The set designers pulled out all of stops to create realistic-looking sets and costumes to evoke the feel of 1860s and 1870s Georgia. It was money well spent. It's hard to believe nowadays that films could with hundreds of flesh-and-blood extras and real pyrotechnic effects, in the days of computer animation. The effects and sets still dazzle almost seventy years later, mostly because we know they're REAL.
The title of the film, and much of the historical background which precipitates Scarlett's transformation as a character, presents a vision of American history that modern audiences---myself included---will find very difficult to swallow. The film presents the Reconstruction in a laughably melodramatic fashion, with evil Northern carpetbaggers (with literal carpetbags!) colluding with newly-freed black politicians to trample the defeated plantation aristocracy and tax them out of existence. The movie is highly negative in its portrayal of the Northern governors of the occupied South, and real historians may question not only the depiction of the historic events in the movie, but the movie's attempt to idealize the antebellum period. It seems fitting that the rough-cut premiere of "Gone With the Wind" was presented in a mission-style movie theater in downtown Riverside, California, where the nearby Mission Inn also attempts to present an image of an idealized past that may not have accurately reflected historical reality (in this case, the era of Spanish and Mexican rule in California).
Still, if modern audiences can get past the melodramatic treatment of history (which, nonetheless, is essential to the film's plot), they will be rewarded with an entertaining and intriguing movie anchored by a powerful, resourceful (if amoral) female protagonist, which is a treat to see in a world where there are few powerful female characters. Like "The Godfather", this movie's timelessness rest on its powerful acting. Please watch this epic film (though take two days if you can: its huge length is too much to take in one sitting).