THE American Screen Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (19 June 2016)

"Gone With the Wind" is THE American screen masterpiece, even though nearly 77 years have elapsed since its premiere in December 1939. The script, casting, plot, and music are superb.
What stands out as something ahead of its time is that the moral center of the story is African- American--"Mammy" played by Hattie McDaniel. From her initial admonishments to Miss Scarlett not to eat "like a field hand" and not to "show her bosom" before 5:00 p.m. and throughout the story, she is the voice of common sense and authority on what's "fittin'" for any and all occasions. It's little wonder she was the first African-American person to win Best Supporting Actress for this role, and her acceptance speech at the Awards ceremony on February 29, 1940, is a model of tearful modesty.
The film was exhaustively researched before production even started. After seeing the latest 2K digital restoration on TCM, I noted that the paisley cotton dress that Scarlett wore when she fled Atlanta with Melanie (Olivia de Havilland), her newborn, and Priss (Butterfly McQueen) was mauve rather than brown. I thought at first that it was an anachronism--mauve was the first totally synthetic dye. However, it was discovered in England in the 1850s and could very well have found itself on a bolt of British cloth that was marketed in the Old Confederacy.