A triumph!

Rating: 10/10 (23 May 2003)

It took many years, six, I believe, for Margaret Mitchell to complete the writing of her Pulitzer Prize winning book on which the feature film is based. The novel shows it and it was still being written with major changes, for example, in its title and the name of its protagonist from Pansy to Scarlett even while its publisher, Macmillan, was preparing it for print.
The film also took years in development, including the great struggle to locate exacting matches for its characters and then the application of some of the finest crafts men and women in what might have been the peak year of Hollywood's Golden Age. The film shows that as well. It should be included in all curricula on filmmaking and in long form writing. It is a finely etched, beautifully considered character study. As such it is a triumph in American literature in both novel and film forms. Like all finely accomplished works of the human heart it has become timeless.
Beyond all of that we are left with a depiction of artistry in both literature and movie making when as in other forms, such as architecture, love was part if the gestalt of creation and profit at bottom line accounting and the marketplace were not the major compelling issues. Here, we have an example of serendipity and timing of arts at a moment in our history when it was possible to create the enduring classic that this is. "Gone with the Wind" might also describe the possibility of such a moment.