'Gone with the Wind' Turns 70

'Gone with the Wind' the epic film starring Vivian Leigh as the Georgia plantation owner's daughter Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gabel as the roguish Rhett Butler turned 70 yesterday, December 15^th.

'Gone with the Wind', for those few who do not know, is a romantic melodrama set during and shortly after the American Civil War. 'Gone with the Wind' depicts the adventure of Scarlett O'Hara, a fiery, albeit often unpleasant heroine who spends much of the story not knowing she ought to be in love with Rhett Butler, a cynical, but charming rogue who is impressed by the sudden desire of the South to be free of the United States only as a means to make money as a blockade runner. That is until the burning of Atlanta, when Rhett Butler suddenly gets a desire to join in the "lost cause."

'Gone with the Wind' is very much a film of its time, romanticizing as it does the slave society on the ante bellum South. The society of cavaliers and their ladies was built on the toil of black slaves and cotton. Even without the Civil War, it was likely unsustainable in the face of modern industry and agriculture in the North.

The African American characters are very broadly drawn stereotype, subservient, content with their lot, and without a thought of the Yankee soldiers who are coming to "bring the Jubilee." From a perspective of the 21^st Century viewer, the stereotype is slightly offensive.

Later, 'Gone with the Wind' depicts the male characters of the film riding to "clean up a shanty town" of undesirables. Those who are up on their Reconstruction history will note this as the development of the nascent Ku Klux Klan, which often demonstrated its objections to racial equality through acts of terrorism. In the movie the raid is depicted as an act of resistance by a downtrodden southern people in defense of their women.

Also, for a film set in the Civil War, 'Gone with the Wind' has a curious lack of battle scenes, even though William Tecumseh Sherman is making Georgia howl throughout the second third of the film. There are plenty of scenes about the effects of the war, including the one where Scarlett O'Hara finds herself in the midst of a veritable sea of horribly wounded men.

One does not see what Clark Gable's Rhett Butler sees in Vivian Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara except that she is beautiful, has lots of land, and presents something of a challenge. The marital rape scene, in which Rhett Butler picks Scarlet O'Hara up, and carries her up the stairs to the boudoir for a little rogering illustrates the last. "Odo et amat" as the poet Catullus would say.

Still, 'Gone with the Wind' has some great lines that live forever. Such as:

"Sir, you are no gentleman."

"And Miss, you are no lady."

And, of course:

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

But oddly enough, for all of its flaws, we do for 'Gone with the Wind.' The sensibilities of the film may be both quaint and politically incorrect, the romance unbelievably tempestuous and melodramatic, and the lack of battle scenes irksome for the male viewer, but there is something about the film in its epic grandeur that still appeals. 'Gone with the Wind' could never be made in our century, but it has a certain style, quaint though it sometimes is, that still appeals.

Source: Gone with the Wind, IMDB