The 1st movie to 'go Green'; having Recycled the Great Wall from "KING KONG" as part of the fire in the Burning of Atlanta.

Rating: 8/10 (12 February 2011)

THIS IS ONE of those films that everyone seems to have seen at least once. Afterall, it is very highly rated on everybody's lists of top 100 films. (It does seem to make it on most top 10 ratings also.) The reasons for this are really quite obvious and consequently, little thought, discussion or debate. This is a pity, for putting any work of art should never e exempted from debate, re-examination and, hence, potentially a revision in how we think of it in relationship to us and to Film History.
WITH RESPECT TO "GWTW" and its ranking in various categories, there would appear to be some fluctuation in its ranking. Some would be very high, whereas others wouldn't even "finish in the money." Allow us to give a rundown in certain pertinent areas. Later, those of you who are members of our "Dad Dearborn's Amaterur Arnchair Director's Guild", can come up with their favourite rankings in "kookie kategories."
CATEGORY # 1. As an EPIC, GWTW is right up there as it can be. The magnitude of the entire film is colossal and each part of the whole production are done up in a grand scale. The sum of all of these equal much more than those taken individually.
CATEGORY # 2. As SOAP OPERA, it again rates up there. We vote it the very undisputed all time winner in this slot. There is a Lion's share of extra curricular activity going on; although its depiction is more suppressed and implied, it's explicit, nonetheless.
CATEGORY # 3. Tops as an example of Character Driven drama it is superb. Tgis is no small feat when one considers that the backdrop of the story is The American Civil War and that period following it, known in American History as the Reconstruction.
CATEGORY # 4. As far as its rating as a HISTORICAL DRAMA, it would fall somewhere in the middle; not because it doesn't portray the horrors of war, but rather because for reasons of omission. In the book, there is extensive mention of the rise of and subsequent underground activities of the Ku Klux Klan. In the screen adaptation, the Klan is never mentioned, there are no hooded horsemen. That sequence where Captain Rhett Butler uses the ruse of returning a gun shot bearing Ashley Wilkes home under the pretense of their being all drunken disorderly and having been at a house of ill repute (also never mentioned by name) was the only incident mentioned. It was referred to as the raid on a shanty town near Atlanta.
ONCE SOMEONE ASKED Buster Keaton which was a better picture, GONE WITH THE WIND or Mr. Keaton's own THE GENERAL (Schenck/United Artists, 1927). Buster answered without any discernible pause that it was THE GENERAL, because it was base on an actual historical incident.