Yuck

Rating: 5/10 (13 July 2001)

Probably the most overblown, overrated classical film there is, GWTW fails in almost every account, acting being the biggest. The screenplay is poor in every respect. There are about three scenes that work, all in the first half (all the ones that are particularly famous), but the second half is nothing but dreck. Scarlette O'Hara is perhaps the most selfish, most annoying character ever committed to celluloid, and Rhett Butler is not much better. I sympathized with him, though, because his rudeness came about when having to deal with HER. And about the racism: you may attribute the casual racism to the era in which GWTW was made, but I feel this is unfair. Sure, people were racist at the time, in the North and in the South, but few in the 1930s would have argued against emancipation. This film is NOT just trying to depict how things were in the 1860s, but is actually arguing for slavery. And against the 15th amendment (? maybe 14th; blacks' right to vote, anyways). There is a scene where carpetbaggers are shown as cowardly, evil people as they try to convince black men to vote. How evil this movie is.
For comparison, read the novels of William Faulkner. It would be wrong to deny that he was racist, but, unlike GWTW, he writes about similar events with intelligence. In his novel The Unvanquished, there is a scene that is cognate to the carpetbaggers' trying to get the black men to vote. He does not, however, depict the carpetbaggers as caricatures, but depicts the pathos of the situation.
So the question arises: why does this Margaret Mitchell crap still exist when we as Americans have William Faulkner's insightful novels? It's just the stupidity of this country, I guess.