Gone With the Wind movie review (1939) | Roger Ebert (2024)

"Gone With the Wind” presents a sentimental view of theCivil War, in which the “Old South” takes the place of Camelot and the war wasfought not so much to defeat the Confederacy and free the slaves as to giveMiss Scarlett O'Hara her comeuppance. But we've known that for years; thetainted nostalgia comes with the territory. Yet as “GWTW” approaches its 60thanniversary, it is still a towering landmark of film, quite simply because ittells a good story, and tells it wonderfully well.

For the story it wanted to tell, it was the right film at theright time. Scarlett O'Hara is not a creature of the 1860s but of the 1930s: afree-spirited, willful modern woman. The way was prepared for her by theflappers of Fitzgerald's jazz age, by the bold movie actresses of the period,and by the economic reality of the Depression, which for the first time putlots of women to work outside their homes.

Scarlett'slusts and headstrong passions have little to do with myths of delicate Southernflowers, and everything to do with the sex symbols of the movies that shapedher creator, Margaret Mitchell: actresses such as Clara Bow, Jean Harlow,Louise Brooks and Mae West. She was a woman who wanted to control her ownsexual adventures, and that is the key element in her appeal. She also soughtto control her economic destiny in the years after the South collapsed, firstby planting cotton and later by running a successful lumber business. She wasthe symbol the nation needed as it headed into World War II; the spiritualsister of Rosie the Riveter.

Ofcourse, she could not quite be allowed to get away with marrying three times,coveting sweet Melanie's husband Ashley, shooting a plundering Yankee, andbanning her third husband from the marital bed in order to protect her petitewaistline from the toll of childbearing. It fascinated audiences (it fascinatesus still) to see her high-wire defiance in a male chauvinist world, buteventually such behavior had to be punished, and that is what “Frankly, my dear,I don't give a damn” is all about. If “GWTW” had ended with Scarlett'sunquestioned triumph, it might not have been nearly as successful. Its originalaudiences (women, I suspect, even more than men) wanted to see her swatteddown--even though, of course, tomorrow would be another day.

RhettButler was just the man to do it. As he tells Scarlett in a key early scene, “Youneed kissing badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed, andoften, and by someone who knows how.” For “kissed,” substitute the word you'rethinking of. Dialogue like that reaches something deep and fundamental in mostpeople; it stirs their fantasies about being brought to sexual pleasure despitethemselves. (“Know why women love the horse whisperer?” I was asked by a womanfriend not long ago. “They figure, if that's what he can do with a horse, thinkwhat he could do with me.”) Scarlett's confusion is between her sentimentalfixation on a tepid “Southern gentleman” (Ashley Wilkes) and her unladylikelust for a bold man (Rhett Butler). The most thrilling struggle in “GWTW” isnot between North and South, but between Scarlett's lust and her vanity.

ClarkGable and Vivien Leigh were well matched in the two most coveted movie roles ofthe era. Both were well-served by a studio system that pumped out idealizedprofiles and biographies, but we now know what outlaws they were: Gable, thehard-drinking playboy whose studio covered up his scandals; Leigh, theneurotic, drug-abusing beauty who was the despair of every man who loved her.

Theybrought experience, well-formed tastes and strong egos to their roles, and thecamera, which cannot lie and often shows more than the story intends, caughtthe flash of an eye and the readiness of body language that suggested sexualchallenge. Consider the early scene where they first lay eyes on one anotherduring the barbecue at Twelve Oaks. Rhett “exchanges a cool, challenging starewith Scarlett,” observes the critic Tim Dirks. “She notices him undressing herwith his eyes: `He looks as if--as if he knows what I look like without myshimmy.' “

Ifthe central drama of “Gone With the Wind” is the rise and fall of a sexualadventuress, the counterpoint is a slanted but passionate view of the OldSouth. Unlike most historical epics, “GWTW” has a genuine sweep, a convincingfeel for the passage of time. It shows the South before, during and after thewar, all seen through Scarlett's eyes. And Scarlett is a Southerner. So wasMargaret Mitchell. The movie signals its values in the printed narration thatopens the film, in language that seems astonishing in its bland, unquestionedassumptions:

“Therewas a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in thispretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen ofKnights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only inbooks, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with thewind.”

Yes,with the capital letters and all. One does not have to ask if the Slaves saw itthe same way. The movie sidesteps the inconvenient fact that plantationgentility was purchased with the sweat of slaves (there is more sympathy forScarlett getting calluses on her pretty little hands than for all the crimes ofslavery). But to its major African-American characters it does at least granthumanity and complexity. Hattie McDaniel, as Mammy, is the most sensible andclear-sighted person in the entire story (she won one of the film's eightOscars), and although Butterfly McQueen, as Prissy, will always be associatedwith the line “I don't know nothin' about birthin' babies,” the character as awhole is engaging and subtly subversive.

Rememberthat when “GWTW” was made, segregation was still the law in the South and thereality in the North. That the Ku Klux Klan was written out of one scene forfear of giving offense to elected officials who belonged to it. The movie comesfrom a world with values and assumptions fundamentally different from ourown--and yet, of course, so does all great classic fiction, starting with Homerand Shakespeare. A politically correct “GWTW” would not be worth making, andmight largely be a lie.

Asan example of filmmaking craft, “GWTW” is still astonishing. Several directorsworked on the film; George Cukor incurred Clark Gable's dislike and wasreplaced by Victor Fleming, who collapsed from nervous exhaustion and wasrelieved by Sam Wood and Cameron Menzies. The real auteur was the producer,David O. Selznick, the Steven Spielberg of his day, who understood that the keyto mass appeal was the linking of melodrama with state-of-the-art productionvalues. Some of the individual shots in “GWTW” still have the power to leave usbreathless, including the burning of Atlanta, the flight to Tara and the “streetof dying men” shot, as Scarlett wanders into the street and the camera pullsback until the whole Confederacy seems to lie broken and bleeding as far as theeye can see.

Andthere is a joyous flamboyance in the visual style that is appealing in thesedays when so many directors have trained on the blandness of television.Consider an early shot where Scarlett and her father look out over the land,and the camera pulls back, the two figures and a tree held in black silhouettewith the landscape behind them. Or the way the flames of Atlanta are framed tobackdrop Scarlett's flight in the carriage.

I'veseen “Gone With the Wind” in four of its major theatrical revivals--1954, 1961,1967 (the abortive “widescreen” version) and 1989, and now here is the 1998restoration. It will be around for years to come, a superb example ofHollywood's art and a time capsule of weathering sentimentality for aCivilization gone with the wind, all right--gone, but not forgotten.