"Frankly, my dear, I DON'T give a damn..."

Gone With the Wind  (1939)

Adam’s rating: ★★★  (out of 5)

Director: Victor Fleming

Rated: none. 238 min.

No. 4 on AFI 100

No. 6 on AFI 100 reissue

No. 152 on IMDB Top 250

Starring: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh,
Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland

"Gone With the Wind": No. 4 on AFI 100;
No. 6 on AFI 100 (2008); No. 152 on IMDB Top 250

I absolutely love Vivien Leigh. She is seriously one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen on the screen. It’s the eyes. I’ve only seen a small number of her films, but she was absolutely gorgeous and delivered a true and convincing performance as Scarlett O’Hara; she was fabulous as Emma Lady Hamilton in “That Hamilton Woman,” and even though she was 12 years older than when she played Scarlett, she was still charming, convincing and a character you felt for as Blanche du Bois in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

She’s a marvelous actress.

But “Gone With the Wind” has got to be the most over-rated film I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

Sure, Leigh delivers a fine performance – even though I hate the ignorance that her character portrays in the film’s beginning. And I’m quite sure that’s a point I hate about all of the characters in the film’s opening 30 to 60 minutes: the pure ignorance that the start of the Civil War is going to be a matter of a few weeks before the war is over.

While there is something to be said in the story plot about the learning that goes on as the war wages, as Atlanta burns, as they go from having everything as rich plantation owners to nothing and then back to riches during “Reconstruction,” the introduction of the characters puts a grandiose naïveté on display for all to see.

The other aspect I strongly dislike in this film – fuck it, I absolutely hate and abhor it – is the epic-ness of this film. Granted, I hate almost all epics, but I fail to understand why 1.) this is such a popular book and furthermore 2.) a popular movie.

Elaborate sets, fancy and elaborate costumes, lots of actors, lots of extras, big budgets ... these aren’t the basis for crowning a film one of the best movies ever made. There has to be some basis for making a movie great, other than ticket sales, which are gained by a huge marketing budget and the amount of publicity a film generates. This seems to be the issue with all epics. They make a big hubbub, get some ink, make some money and are considered AMAZING! GREAT! WONDERFUL! And that’s why I hate (most) epics.

Granted, some epics aren’t all that bad. “Spartacus,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Ben-Hur,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Longest Day,” “Rebecca,” “Schindler’s List,” “300,” “Gladiator,” even “Doctor Zhivago,” these are some fine examples of epic films that earn their mettle in big-budget epics that can cash a check their mouths wrote.

Really, the only thing I like in this film is about halfway through in the story when Scarlett O'Hara promises herself that she will never go hungry again. So, for about 45 minutes of this 3 hour behemoth, Scarlett picks herself up by her bootstraps and is her own woman. It sends a good message, one of empowerment. And I kind of like it. Too bad the rest of it is about being naive and helpless. (Of course, since it is based on a book, the film can't do much about the story.)

Sadly, I just feel that the powers-that-be slapped a sexy leading man into this film, which had a huge marketing budget and because it’s an old movie that received too much publicity and everyone went to see it and it made a lot of money and left an impression of grandeur among the people of a post-Depression/pre-war world, it’s been rubber-stamped for the last 70-some years as being worth a damn.

And frankly, I don’t.