Still Not Completely On Board

Rating: Null/10 (20 January 2008)

There's no doubting its monumental power and ambition; Gone with the Wind is all that. It was David Selznick's testamentno movie before in the sound era had been so technically advanced and sweeping in its dramatic intention and scope (especially in its groundbreaking use of color to set mood and atmosphere). Among many, two things in particular stood out after several viewings. First, it foresaw the elongated structure of movies of three decades hence, where very long running times became typical. In the process it opened up extended running time as an option in the editing of lesser epics. The second, which I suddenly realized after the 4th viewing (and a departure from the normal convention up to that time), is that it declined to focus on the more virtuous figures, instead placing a couple of disreputable and flawed charactersa vain Southern belle and a shady alpha male gunrunnerat the center of the narrative.
As for the first innovation noted, I am ambivalent. As a former film editor for a UHF TV station, assigned to re-format Hollywood movies for airing and as a result required to evaluate cinematic storytelling closely, I often found the extensive length of many pictures made after 1955 to be self-indulgent; 'Scope and color invited plenty of scenic mood-setting. As a film-goer I often found them a test to take in during one sitting.
The second was a revelation; the characters are there in plain sight, and I should've taken them as a given, but for those of us growing up in the '60s, even film buffs, GWTW carries so much baggage that it remains hard for me to take merely on its filmic merits, which are those of timeless, romantic, and melodramatic skill. The problem is that it unabashedly glamorizes and pretties up the Antebellum South and the Confederacy. For a modern African-American, this is somewhat analogous to offering an idealized portrait of the Fourth Reich, with its high-living Albert Speers, their wives, mistresses and servants; enjoying their Alpine adventures and tooling around in their big Mercedes cars until war comes and it all falls apart. If you saw such a film would you applaud it? Would you find it of nostalgic value? If not, you see what I'm getting at.
It has been years now. I am familiar with the reputations of all involved here: they were film industry titans. The casting was inspired. There were many scenes which scream their epic pretensions. But I remain unmoved. In short, I know GWTW is a great movie but to me, because of the story at its very center, the entire exercise still seems hollow and morally suspect. Finally--I may be sounding overly picky, but the famous Atlanta-burning scene has a minor flaw too. It's the railroad cars. The fire inferno is impressive as all get out, but better miniature work was needed for the exploding freight cars. William Cameron Menzies was the best designer ever, but I don't think model work was his niche; other specialts like Fred Jackman, Fred Sersen, Dev Jennings or the Lydecker brothers were needed. Attributing the minor flaw to the distant era isn't a good enough excuse. Just look at the model work in Hell's Angels, Suez, In Old Chicago and The Dawn Patrol, among other films, and you'd see what I mean. In a way it points up a curious problem with Selznick's epics: they lack satisfactory action sequences (Viva Villa excluded). Selznick was interested in character, personality; he was right to be, of course, but such long pictures as this and Duel In The Sun need something other than stylistic posturing. They need real excitement. GWTW is a Civil War epic without a single battle scene. Something is wrong about that.