Gone with the Wind is perhaps the best loved and most well known Hollywood spectacle ever released to film. It's a four hour long romantic Civil War epic that captures the intensity and chaos of war, the drama in families, and the intricate romantic setups portrayed. Gone with the Wind tells it's story on such massive, epic proportions that have been equaled by relatively few films to date (Ben-Hur and the Lord of the Rings are examples). Director Victor Fleming has crafted a rare quality cinematic event that has the rare distinction of being so sublimely made, in it's visualness, it's plot and it's deep development into it's characters.
While correctly historical fiction, Gone with the Wind also falls in category with romantic drama. It features equally headstrong characters in the leads: Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). The film follows the course of their lives and their love, and the several incidents and events that took place during it.
The first half of Gone with the Wind is an example of brilliant, engaging, original, fashionable and great American filmmaking. This first half of the film follows Scarlett and Rhett during the American Civil War. We witness Scarlett especially change from the feisty, self-centered, and selfish young lady into a woman who goes to any lengths to protect her family and plantation at Tara. Perhaps most importantly, we are given several camera shots that display the intensity and chaos of war. In the best scene of the entire film, thousands of wounded and bloodied Confederate soldiers lie wounded on a road in Atlanta. We see this masse shot for several minutes, and we are just now, for one of the few times in all movies, shown the ugliness of war at it's highest.
The first half of the movie introduces all of it's characters supremely well, and then digs into it's principal ones. We know what these men and women are going through; we can feel it. We can coherently and completely understand the complex friendships and relationships going on with all of them. It's a very interesting grasp at how life in the old South was back then. It's through this movie that we can gain an understanding.
The second half of the film is more slowly paced then the first, and, I'm afraid to say, a little less captivating. With the Civil War over, the South is in disarray. Once again, the film is able to capture the pandemonium of the aftermath of war. Then the film places it's characters back into play from whence they began. Rhett and Scarlett marry, and become a rich couple living in a family house. Tara is all but forgotten. They have a kid, and live life to it's fullest. Rumors start circulating that Scarlett and her former love Ashley are now having an affair, but things get only worse when Rhett realizes Scarlett married him for his wealth and also when their only child dies in a horse riding accident. It's then at this point that Scarlett realizes she really has loved Rhett all along, but it's too late for him, who packs his things and walks away into the fog. Scarlett starts crying and breaking down, until she remembers about Tara. The last, brilliant shot of the film is of Scarlett looking down at her former home, followed by the words THE END.
As of now as I am writing this review, I have yet to read the novel by Margaret Mitchell, although from what I hear, the movie is a faithful adaptation.
What so thankfully prevents Gone with the Wind from being a total bore is because it has such a unique visual style behind it; technicolor was a new thing back into those days, and because the story itself is so engaging. The scenery shots are incredible. The fashionable look at 1800s Southern life is at it's utmost supreme so that we actually feel like that we are there to, walking invisibly among the characters.
For the most part, Gone with the Wind represents a high-period romance drama, though more importantly, an amazing film that can be loved by all while being so character driven. If Gone with the Wind needs to be summed up into one word, then that one, single word would be: magnificent. The sheer weight of magnificence that prevails in Gone with the Wind is what makes it one of the greatest and most masterful and influential movies ever put to screen.
*****/5
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