A Rolls-Royce for Middlebrows

Rating: Null/10 (29 December 2000)

Not a great movie, in the strictest sense -- it doesn't tell us anything we don't know, it doesn't offer a new viewpoint on an old subject, and it hews rather too closely to conventional Hollywood narrative techniques. Further, the faithful-old-servant stuff is pretty hard to take in this day and age. But certainly it's a great testament to the studio system and its ability to conjure lost worlds with dazzling images. You'll never see Technicolor this rich again, a production this lavish, such recklessly extravagant casting (even the minor roles, like Isabell Jewell's Emmy Slattery or Laura Hope Crews' Aunt Pittypat, are perfection).
And yes, Scarlett and Rhett may be the stuff of women's novels, but as played by Gable and Leigh, they're strikingly adult, and flesh-and-blood--they convey much with looks and gestures that the Hays Office couldn't have been happy about. The fastest-moving four-hour movie ever made, and, as it has been described elsewhere, "the movie-est of all movies."