As God Is My Witness, I'll Never Be Hungry Again

Rating: 6/10 (9 January 2013)

Scarlett O'Hara is the beautiful daughter of a wealthy plantation owner in Georgia in the 1860's. Sought after by every eligible bachelor in the state, her world is about to turn upside down as the one man she loves marries someone else and civil war with the North threatens to destroy everything she holds dear.
Gone With The Wind is a must-see film for all cinema fans, if only because it epitomises everything Hollywood has always represented - opulence, glamour, spectacle, excitement and star power. Some think it's one of the greatest movies ever made, whilst others view it as mawkish overblown melodrama; in my view it's a bit of both - it has some faults and is way too long but is so beautiful to watch that it allows the patient viewer to be totally consumed and immersed in the period visuals. It's also important to remember what a gamble the movie was for producer David Selznick; it was the third most expensive film ever made at the time, had a relatively unknown actress in the lead, was more than twice the length of most pictures and was one of only a handful of American films made in colour. But the gamble paid off spectacularly, with the movie winning ten Oscars, going on to make a hundred times its huge budget at the box office and earning a place amongst the most influential films in cinema history. I'm not really a fan of either historical epics or love stories but in spite of this I really like the film, for two main reasons I think - the photography and the cast. The cameraman was Ernest Haller and for me he really brings the movie alive; the early Technicolor images are rich in reds, browns and blacks and the Southern iconography and the unbridled passion of the story come to the fore through his camera-work. The plot is really four episodes - Scarlett as the spoilt ingenue, the war, the return to Tara, and Scarlett and Rhett's doomed marriage - and Haller carefully adapts the style to suit each section, giving the big emotional highs a grand sweep and splendour whilst also picking out beautiful details, like the tears in the eyes of the young piper boy. If nothing else, the famous crane shot at the Atlanta rail depot as Scarlett searches for the doctor is worth watching the whole movie for and one of the most profound depictions of war in all cinema. Equally marvellous are the actors - everybody is terrific but Leigh and Gable are perhaps the most iconic of all screen lovers, DeHavilland (who is still alive at this time of writing) is superb and McDaniel is outstanding as the amazing Mammy and deservedly won an Oscar for her portrayal (shamefully the only black person to do so until 1963). It's all great rip-roaring stuff, but there are some things that weaken it I think, the most obvious being the classic problem with epic tales in that it just kind of winds down. Rhett's last line is justifiably very famous, but all the good stuff happens in the first half. As Scarlett settles back into a life of ease the movie becomes a series of crying jags as characters get killed off arbitrarily or the wedded couple have another barney and throw some crockery around. It's maybe not fair to complain about the excessive running time of a movie where everything else is excessive as well, but, like Scarlett, it does go on a bit. Also, and I suspect this is a male thing, but what do any of the female characters find attractive about Ashley - the man is the biggest wet blanket in any movie. In some ways, the making of Gone With The Wind is as much of a fairy tale as the story itself - the casting stories are legendary, George Cukor was fired as the director after a few weeks, screenwriter Sidney Howard died in a farm accident four months before it was released, the use of a Novachord in Max Steiner's intermission score is the first synthesiser music in film, etc, and have been the subject of numerous books and documentaries. Put simply, it's a movie you have to see. Featuring astonishing production design by the talented William Cameron Menzies (Invaders From Mars) and adapted from Margaret Mitchell's much beloved and Pulitzer Prize-winning 1936 novel.