Winds of war

Rating: 9/10 (20 September 2015)

The fact that as at my time of writing, "Gone With The Wind" stands only at number 152 in the best movie rankings of this site, I hope might be mainly attributable to the relative youth of the posters here. Here surely is Golden Age Hollywood's lasting monument to itself, which like another big-subject civil war movie from a previous generation (D W Griffiths' "Birth Of A Nation") while politically flawed in its treatment of black people, nevertheless stands as a significant and magnificent piece of movie-making.
It's a film I'd dearly love to see on the big screen but all my viewings of it so far have been on TV which can't begin to do justice to the scale and colour of the achievement here. I know there's some contention about who directed which parts of it but I'm going to give my kudos to Victor Fleming who I believe did the lion's share of the work behind the camera. The sets are magnificent and the set-pieces even more so with several jaw-dropping scenes which are testament to artistic imagination and technical achievement in equal measure. Of course the two most celebrated of these I suppose are Rhett Butler's rescue of Melanie, Scarlett and Missy just ahead of the burning edifices of Atlanta and the rising dolly-shot of the wounded and dead of the Confederate Army as Scarlett seeks out Dr Meade.
But let's not forget the acting too, especially the two leads who are both terrific, Gable, in his greatest role, is mean, moody and magnificent, while Vivien Leigh in her Hollywood breakthrough role is captivating as the wild, wilful and wonderful Scarlett O'Hara. While the characters of Ashley and Melanie Wilkes seem almost too good to be true (Ashley's guilty feelings for Scarlett aside), they are nonetheless beautifully played by Leslie Howard and Olivia De Havilland. Hattie McDaniel belies the racial stereotyping of her Mammy character to deliver an unforgettable, often scene-stealing performance.
It is difficult today to witness some of the political incorrectness of the treatment given to the black characters, in the main shown as subservient, excitable and slow-witted, not sufficiently redeemed by their brave deeds in the film (Big Sam saves Scarlett from being raped, while Mammy effectively acts as the conscience of the film) and it is dreadful for modern ears to hear the "d" word spoken so casually if only sparingly.
However I'm not going to criticise the movie for that when there's so much good to praise. It could be argued too that it's better up to the end of the war and goes a bit soap-opera-ish thereafter and the death-count starts to over-dramatically mount up towards the end, but such is the power of the film-making that it sweeps the viewer right along to both the central character's famous last words. By the time Max Steiner's famous theme plays over the final scene of the defiant Scarlett framed (has any film ever bettered the use of silhouette than this one?) against the burnt ochre sky, you realise you have watched something very special.
Movie-making has unquestionably got bigger down the years, especially in the C-Gen, SFX-fests of recent times but I don't think any film will ever look or play better than this one. It's been many times said and written that 1939 was probably the year that more great movies came out of Hollywood than any other, but this one outdoes them all. And most other films since, come to that...