Please, readers, indulge me a minute! Of course you've seen Gone with the Wind...haven't we all? But I watched it last night, all four hours worth, and just wanted to remind viewers to go back and see it again!This review, requiring no description of plot or characters, will be a hodge-podge of thoughts:
Costuming: Magnificent! Love those flowing gowns in the Antebellum old south.
Pre Civil War: What a flavor of the south. Men being gentlemen, everyone dancing, slaves smiling, an entire society set in its ways.
War brewing: Enjoyed being reminded how enthusiastic the young men were about going into battle.
Scarlet, Rhett, Ashley, and Melanie: Still fabulous, all of them! Great dialogues, dramatic tension, super acting. And what lookers they were!
Dated sexism: Rhett's aggression toward Scarlett bothers modern viewers...a reminder of what sexism there was way back when. EG: He says to her, "You need to be kissed and a lot!"
Personal tidbits: Leslie Howard died only four years after making the film, shot down in a plane during WWII. Vivien Leigh only got the big role because of a chance meeting with David O Selznick while he was filming the Atlanta fire scenes. She won a second Oscar for playing Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. She was married for 21 years to Laurence Olivier, until he ran off with the younger Joan Plowright. Vivien fought TB most of her adult life. Olivia de Havilland, who played the angelic Melanie, is still alive and well at 95 in Paris! Hattie McDaniel, or Mamie, decided not to attend an award ceremony in Atlanta in 1939 because she was afraid of racial violence.
History: The film is still a great history lesson of the Civil War. From the pre-war years to the defeat of the South, viewers recall the bitter conflict.
Irony: The year GWTW came out, 1939, the world was on the verge of chaos, with war about to break out. The pre WWII world, a rather naive one like pre-Civil War America, was about to undergo an initiation into a harsher, crueler world.
More irony: In 1939, African Americans had no rights in the South...long after the Civil War had ended. So southerners who viewed the film went home after the movies to the Jim Crow ways. In other words, the film raised little consciousness in America.
Final thought: They don't make 'em like that any more! What fun it was to revisit this old favorite.
Dear friend, fun trivia, but a correction. Melanie was played by Olivia de Havilland, not Maureen O'Hara. Ms. O'Hara is no longer with us, but O.is. My mother was often taken for de Havilland in her youth. They were spittin' images. Both beautiful.
ReplyDeleteYou're so right...funny that I wrote that. I read up what Olivia de Havilland is doing in Paris these days. Will re-edit my post. Thanks, English teacher!
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