A nostalgia for the American South and a visual delight.

Rating: 7/10 (2 July 1999)

Gone with the Wind is a visual feast, especially if seen on the big screen. Who can forget those flaming orange sunsets at Tara? or the burning of Atlanta, and the use of the camera as it shows the dying and wounded soldiers.
But more importantly, I think this film depicts a mourning and nostalgia for what was considered to be an elegant agrarian society, when gentlemen callers courted Southern belles. Ashley Wilkes constantly refers to a (Southern) gentleman's code of honour in contrast to those marauding Yankees. The beauty and elegance of Tara is reduced to a wasteland caused the devastation of the Civil War. In other words, the film mourns a past that can never be recaptured.
As this film was released in 1939, I wonder whether this film was mirroring the anxieties that existed on the eve of the 2nd World War, when the threat of the possible destruction of civilisation was looming on the horizon?