A must-see on the big screen!

Rating: 10/10 (27 January 2019)

Like everyone else, I'd seen GWTW on TV several times over the years. I never counted it among my favorite films. However, when the opportunity came up to go to a screening at a theater last weekend I thought, "That's a film that should be seen on the big screen!"
WOW, was I right!
The cinematography, the technicolor, the production design, the performances, the music, the imagery, the scope, the sizzling dialogue between Rhett and Scarlett...
Most of the time going to a movie is just going to a movie but this was an EXPERIENCE!
It was the first time that I'd ever seen GWTW 100% from start to finish, uninterrupted and with no distractions. Roger Ebert once said, "A good movie is never too long," and I concur. Not once in 248 minutes was I tempted to look at my watch. I was riveted to the screen. The entire theater was sold-out and the audience applauded a couple of times (including at the end) so a few hundred people seemed to agree with me.
I have to say that the character of Scarlet is a lot more complex than she's usually given credit for being. Yes, she's vain, selfish, manipulative, and opportunistic but she's also strong (both physically and mentally), resourceful, determined, and courageous. She nurses wounded soldiers, gets an ailing Melanie and newborn baby through miles of a war-zone to safety, takes over running the family's plantation, kills an enemy soldier who tries to rob and possibly rape and/or kill her, provides for her whole family and starts and runs a successful lumber business. Not bad for a girl in her teens and 20s in the 1860s! You'd think that she'd be a feminist icon.
I have just one thing to say to the idiots who think that a film that accurately depicts the way life was in the 1860s is somehow "racist" and that is...SHUT UP! Go watch some dumb, SJW message-laden, super-hero movie and leave commenting on classic films to the adults! I was going to rate it a 9 but I'm giving it a 10 to offset the 1 ratings from numbskulls who get offended by history.
If you really love movies then you need to see this one the way it was meant to be seen; uncut, uninterrupted, in stereo, and on the BIG screen!