Gone with the Wind" is good cinema!
Victor Fleming ended up directing two of the most entertaining films ever made: "Gone with the Wind," and "The Wizard of Oz."
"Gone with the Wind" is a masterpiece of mass entertainment, a world apart from "Children of Paradise." Here, the period is conceived in luxuriant and romantic terms, calculated to serve the intentions of escapism... The picture is set in the most turbulent and romantic era of American history, the years during and after the Civil War, providing the viewer with a big epic world of fantasy...
But the true key to the film's success is the adventures of one character named Scarlett O'Hara whose actions, motives, emotions, joys and pains make her the perfect element for a rich romantic film... Her obsession to rebuild her plantation Tara, to "never to be hungry again", to re-create the splendor and romance of a "land of cavaliers and cotton fields in the Old South," is figured out to stimulate the audience with her many faces...
From the opening scene with the 16 year-old beauty on the steps of Tara through war, marriage, poverty, reconstruction, birth, death, attempted rape, miscarriage and lost love, until the final image of the tear-stained face of the 28 year-old Scarlett, who refuses to recognize defeat in Rhett's rejection of her, promising to return to Tara and to "think of some way to get him back," Vivien Leigh is magnificent... She carries the picture, and dominates it... She reproduces the character of Scarlett in all its eloquence complexity...
Clark Gable is fascinating... He is the perfect of the American male movie star to play the gambler and lady-killer... The motion picture marks the climax of his career as a sex symbol... The dramatic high point of Clark Gable's performance in the film is the scene of Rhett Butler crying in Melanie's presence over Scarlett near death from her miscarriage...
The love scenes between Scarlett and Rhett give the picture a vibrancy that is one of its main attractions... The film begins with their first stormy meeting in the library at Twelve Oaks and intensifies at the Atlanta bazaar, when Rhett shocks the confederacy by bidding $l00 "in gold," to dance with the newly widowed Mrs. Hamilton, and Scarlett scandalizes the town by accepting...
The richest characterization of the entire film is given by Hattie McDaniel as Mammy, the sly only person, besides Rhett Butler, who is never fooled by Scarlett's airs and tears...
Butterfly McQueen portrays Scarlett's shrill servant girl, Prissy...
Thomas Mitchell plays Gerald O'Hara, master of Tara and father of Scarlett... He teaches his daughter that "Land is the only thing that lasts."
Ona Munson plays Belle Watling, the leading madam of Atlanta's red-light district... Belle's scenes are brief but effective, and, for the time, quite frank in letting the audience know that she is Rhett's mistress... Munson's finest moment was her scene with Melanie...
"Gone with the Wind" is good cinema. We see very little in the way of important scenes but definitely much less than in Griffith's "Intolerance," and yet we feel as we have seen a lot: The shot of Scarlett and her father looking out over the fields of Tara; Scarlett's search for Dr. Meade 'climbing' over piles of rubbles under the top of a ruined building; Atlanta on fire; bleeding twilights; and the swirling montage of Sherman's troops marching through Georgia...
"Gone with the Wind" contains no battles, but it gives an impression, quite strong, of the Civil War by its one really grand scene, the thousands of wounded lying about the Atlanta railroad station...
The idealization of the Old South is beautifully described: the shot of the Mississippi riverboat; the barbecue at Twelve Oaks; the Atlanta bazaar; the Confederate battle flag waving bravely over a small remaining part of the Army in the last, gray days of the 'Lost Cause.'
"Gone with the Wind" is different with the outstanding achievement in the use of color: The O'Hara family at evening prayer; Rhett's farewell to Scarlett on the McDonough Road; the green teapot, symbol of gossipy; the delicate dawn scene of Scarlett and her father at Tara, when she discovers her father has lost his mind; and when Rhett proposes to Scarlett in Aunt Pity-pat's parlor as the late-afternoon sun spreads the room with a golden autumnal light...
With a memorable music score by Max Steiner, "Gone With the Wind" is an instant classic, winner of eight Academy Awards...
Reviewed by Roberto Frangie
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