An epic artistic achievement in its magnitude, visual beauty and great acting

Rating: 9/10 (28 July 2019)

How sad that in 2019 as I write this, the voters of IMDB can only rank this 164.
Consider that just 12 years earlier, the American Film Institute ranked this movie 6th.
Tastes change and with short attention spans, the younger person can't sit through a four-hour epic.
It shows you how much the country has changed that this movie still remains the highest grossing film when adjusted for inflation. You can't get away with a 3-hour movie these days, let alone considering four.
I would give this a 10 but the only drawbacks are the generally weak storyline.
What makes this picture is Selznick's vision of telling a grand story about the South with the dropback of the Civil War and its aftermath and the impact on a southern family.
Vivien Leigh gives one of the greatest performance ever for an actress even though she is dealing with a script that is often underwhelming and would be near impossible for most actresses to carry.
Clark Gable is great as well even though he is playing a jerk whose lines are often unbelievable particularly as this movie draws to a close.
The terrible ending almost made me give this an 8 but the technical achievements are just too amazing.
In these days of special effects, it is too easy to gloss over the incredible costumes and set designs in this film. Such great care, attention to detail and painful expense was poured into this picture to make it look as startling as it does.
The fire scene is groundbreaking in its use of special effects for its time.
There are a million great shots here.
The supporting cast led by Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard are all top-notch.
Also, this film directly influenced many great films which borrowed from it such as Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Jezebel, The Maltese Falcon just to name a few.
I also reject the view that this movie glorifies the South. It is a romantic movie about a Southern family during the Civil War but that doesn't mean it romanticizes the South or the Confederacy. By that logic, would southerners be incapable of being romantic? I actually think this movie does a good job of showing the folly of those eager to go to war early in the film and shows the painful realities of the death and destruction war causes. Those who made this movie in 1939 had lived through World War 1 and World War 2 was about to break out. The movie might not spend a lot of time dealing with slavery but this picture was not meant to be about the slaves.
Gone with the Wind set a new standard for epic films and it is a sign of the times that I would feel as though I had to defend the picture's greatness where as 20 years ago it was just common wisdom that this was one of the greatest pictures made.