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 "Cinematic masterpiece. Hollywood legend. National treasure." Those are the
first six words on the back of the box and they don't scrimp on the praise they
heap on this film. It says that this movie won eight Oscars in 1939 as well as
two special Oscars that year. Scarlett is described as tempestuous and Rhett is
"dashing". They at least note that these two lovers are separated by pride and
self-delusion as they call them "unforgettable screen lovers" and their story
an "immortal saga set against the stunning backdrop of a time and place Gone With the Wind ." 1939, 233 minutes, DVD
You know the drill on this one. Vivien Leigh is southern belle Scarlett O'Hara
and Clark Gable is the charismatic rogue Captain Rhett Butler. I didn't really
see the film as a story about their love affair so much as the story of how
Scarlett goes from being a self-involved southern belle who wanted to hear
nothing of war to a woman who's life is forever altered by that war to the
living embodiment of the new south as she gladly makes money off the Yankees
she had sworn her undying hatred for when she was trying to save Tara after the
war. Butler is rarely in the movie for the first three hours, appearing here
and there to bail out Scarlett from some trouble or other and to comment on her
most recent marriage. He only really becomes central to the story at the end
when he finally enters his ill-fated marriage with Scarlett. This, from a
narrative standpoint is a bit of a flaw, I believe. If this is supposed to be
an epic love story, then the Butler/O'hara relationship should be ever present
throughout the movie, even if just simmering in the background. But it isn't.
There are entire stretches where you almost forget Clark Gable is in this film.
Times such as when Scarlett is screwing around with Melanie Wilkes while
mooning over her husband, the girlishly named Ashley. During these times,
especially when Scarlett is busy saving Tara, Rhett doesn't even seem to be on
her mind. To be fair, Rhett himself points out to her late in the film (as
Ashley did earlier) that Tara meant more to her than any man. But this film is
always portrayed as their love story.  The movie covers an impressive number of events in the life of Scarlett and at
just about four hours in length it has the time to do so. The early part of the
film does a great job at showing the easy life she had. They really used color
in those scenes to show the carnival-like existence Scarlett led, with parties
and dances and social gatherings, each requiring some ridiculous outfit. In
these early scenes, she's actually quite winning as she basically does whatever
she wants without regard for anyone else's sensibilities. Instead of napping
with all the other girls at the party (did people at parties really nap in the
afternoon before the real festivities began in the evening?) she sneaked
downstairs into the library in a vain attempt to steal her best friend's
fiancee. Of course Rhett was in there the whole time hiding and that led to the
his and Scarlett's first real interchange. Clark Gable's intonation was just
what you'd imagine a southern gentleman might sound like and the refined way he
used the English language made it almost seem foreign and not as ugly as
English usually sounds coming from an American. War comes and Scarlett's first husband dies and she mourns his death by going
to a ball and dancing the night away with Rhett. The movie is very good at
showing how as the Civil War drags on and encroaches ever closer on her picture
perfect world, Scarlett is still too self-absorbed to see the end is coming and
that there is real jeopardy for her very way of life. She is practically a
force unto herself. As her friend, the Polly Purehearted Melanie Wilkes prays
over the wounded, you can see Scarlett pretending to pray with her and thinking
that this is so boring and what does this have to do with me getting a husband?
Then you see her as a nurse in a gigantic ward full of dying rebels and the
doctor is demanding that she assist him in amputating some guy's leg without
any knock out juice. Well, our heroine wrinkles her nose up (eww! gross!),
thinks "screw this" and takes off, even as her South needs her. It is shortly
after this sequence that her self-centeredness goes from being endearing to
making her an insufferable bore.  For the next two hours, she becomes one of the least likeable characters you
will ever see. Grim faced and determined to beat the Yankees (and anyone else),
save Tara, and make gobs of money, she spends the rest of the movie
manipulating everyone she meets for her own ends, treating everyone with
contempt, and continues to moon over the honorable and extremely dull Ashley.
There is a moment when she is in a jail cell with Rhett. He has been imprisoned
by the Yanks and she has come to ask for money to save Tara. She has dolled
herself up, puts on her southern belle mask, and cries and makes nice with
Rhett, playing the flirty schoolgirl with him, telling him everything's great
and nothing's changed. He grabs her hands, then turns them over and looks at
them. He sees that they are calloused and dirty and calls her on the fact that
she has been reduced to doing the work of a field hand. That is the moment that
defines the irrevocable change that Scarlett has gone through. The belle of the
ball is gone forever, replaced by something harder, literally calloused by the
things that have happened to her and the things she has done (she's even killed
a man). All the pretty dresses and coy looks can't completely hide the creature
she has become. And to show that she really is that creature, when she leaves
she's angry only because he didn't give her the money. But is this our heroine?
Are we supposed to cheer Scarlett because she's sacrificed her humanity to
become an unyielding being of granite, capable of only surviving, but not of
feeling? Are we to admire her because she despises and destroys the lives of
those near to her in her single-minded quest for some twisted sense of revenge
(she will show the Yanks that she'll win the war by being more successful than
they can imagine)? Is she a role model because she's a strong woman? Isn't
there more strength in lifting up the lives of those close to you? Did her
existence enrich anyone's life, even her own? Don't get me wrong, the movie is good, and probably deserves its status as a
classic (but maybe not as the classic). It brings back a turning point in American history with clarity and
puts it on a personal level so that you can follow it with some emotional
involvement. The last part of the film seemed to devolve into gratuitous
melodrama where tragedy was piled atop tragedy, but perhaps those were the just
rewards Scarlett reaped for her thoughtless actions throughout her life. Those
events are simply the receipts for everything she's bought into and in classic
tragedian fashion that dates back to Euripides and Aeschylus the price is often
paid in blood. That said, I was still rooting for Rhett to give her one more
chance, even as he uttered the most famous exit line in the history of cinema,
put his hat on and walked out of Tara and on the only woman he ever loved.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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