NFR Project: ‘Gone with the Wind’
Dir: Victor Fleming (and four others)
Scr: Sidney Howard (and 14 others)
Pho: Ernest Haller
Ed: Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom
Premiere: Dec. 15, 1939
221 min.
It’s the ultimate blockbuster. Based on a best-selling historical
novel, Gone with the Wind is still the highest-grossing motion picture
of all time. It is also the epitome of Hollywood style, a textbook example of
how to create a stirring epic that still leaves room and bears focus enough to
illuminate the lives of its imaginary characters.
Margareet Mitchell’s 1936 book, a literary pot-boiler, was so popular that it was
quickly optioned for adaptation to the big screen. Producer David O. Selznick was
determined to create the ultimate epic, and the run-up to filming included
contributions by no fewer than 15 scriptwriters. Additionally, the competition
for the lead role of Scarlett O’Hara meant that thousands of actresses were
considered for the part. In the end, Selznick had a screenplay that told the
mammoth story cogently. At the last, he found his Scarlett in the person of
English actress Vivien Leigh.
The process of making the film was debilitating, requiring
the efforts of five different directors to finish. Its enormous crowd scenes
and awe-inspiring special effects were logistical nightmares to pull off.
Thousands of extras were costumed, herded, and shot (with a camera, natch). Max
Steiner’s brilliant score pumped the movie full of energy. Given the fine performances
by the principals, the result is a luxurious four-hour visual feast that
manages to be compelling on the human scale as well.
It’s a story of the American South. It’s the eve of the
Civil War, and young Scarlett O’Hara (Leigh) is a treasured, and spoiled,
oldest daughter of Gerald O’Hara (Thomas Mitchell), owner of the plantation
Tara. She is selfish, narcissistic, and materialistic – but she is our heroine,
and Leigh gives this Southern belle a flinty, stubbornly brave core that causes
us to root for her, despite her obvious drawbacks (let’s face it, she’s a
bitch).
Scarlett is obsessed with Ashley Wilkes (fellow English
actor Leslie Howard), a planter who’s engaged to her do-good cousin Melanie
(Olivia de Havilland). Scarlett frets and stews over her attraction to Ashley,
but all this drama recedes into the background when war is declared and all the
menfolk set out for what they think will be a brief campaign. Into the picture
steps the anti-hero Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), an assured, amoral
Spitefully, Scarlett agrees to marry Melanie’s brother,
Charles, who shortly after dies of pneumonia on the battlefield. Freshly
widowed, Scarlett insists on dancing with Butler at a charity ball,
scandalizing her peers. The two are obviously meant for each other, but their
initial contacts are fraught with conflict.
The South’s inevitable losses begin to pile up, and soon Atlanta
is under siege. Melanie gives birth, and she and Scarlett are brought out of
the path of the advancing Union Army by Rhett and returned to Tara, now an abandoned
and bereft locale. Scarlett swears that she and her family will never go hungry
again.
In the aftermath of the War, the family toils in the fields
in order to maintain their ownership of Tara. Scarlett tries to obtain needed
tax money form Rhett, to no avail. She then steals her sister’s beau, the
well-off store owner Frank Kennedy and saves the plantation. Scarlett proves to
be a ruthless businesswoman, utilizing convict labor to staff her business
interests.
She becomes a free woman again after her husband is killed
leading an attack on the “poor trash” that threaten the safety of Atlanta’s
(white) womenfolk. Free to marry, she accepts Rhett’s proposal.
Though they are wealthy, their marriage is a tempestuous one.
They have a child together, but that daughter dies tragically. Finally, Rhett
is determined to leave Scarlett, who asks for another chance. “What will I do?”
she asks. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” he replies, and leaves. But
Scarlett is not deterred; she realizes she really loves Rhett, not Ashley, and
vows to get him back, considering that “tomorrow is another day!”
Scarlett is a difficult character to figure out. She is a
proto-feminist figure, one who acts rather than is acted upon, as is the case
with the film’s other female characters. However, she does define herself
through her relationships with men, and was the case for most women at the
time. She is willful and spirited, but the story goes out of its way to punish her
for her independence. It is only her final affirmation that she will survive
and succeed that breaks her out of the Hollywood trap of destroying a female
character that challenges society’s norms.
Then there is the elephant in the room: slavery. Although
their plight motivates the entirety of the film, Black characters are seldom to
be found here, and when they are they are at best portrayed as benevolent
children – at worst, as loud and threatening Negroes. Hollywood was just as
racist as the rest of the country when the book was written and the film was
made, and the procession of Black stereotypes – the whiny maid, the bossy “mammy”,
the stupid groomsman – plods steadily through the movie. According to the film,
slavery exists merely to suffice as plot points for the doings of the movie’s
white characters. It would have you believe that the War was about states’
rights and the preservation of the South’s courtly, antebellum way of life.
The film’s lavish settings and big set pieces – the camera’s
dolly shot, pulling back and back, revealing more and more dead and wounded
Confederates in the Atlanta rail yards, is still stirring – are feasts for the
eye. Never was so much effort put into a convincing remounting of history,
prejudiced in the “Lost Cause” of the South though it is. Despite its numerous
drawbacks, it still plays well today, a remarkable artifact from when Hollywood
was king and no expense was too great to make a memorable film.
The NFR is one
writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry
in chronological order. Next time: Gunga Din.
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