Gone with the Wind (1939) - film review

In 1861, Scarlett O’Hara is celebrating her sixteenth birthday at her family home, a plantation in the southern US state of Georgia.  Although she has many admirers, she is love with just one man, Ashley Wilkes, but he is engaged to another woman, Melanie Hamilton.  On the day that the Civil War is declared, Scarlett hastily agrees to marry Melanie’s brother Charles, but he dies within a few weeks from pneumonia.   Amid the turmoil of the war and her own personal crises, Scarlett moves to Atlanta to live with her sister-in-law Melanie.  Here, she meets Rhett Butler, a disreputable self-made man who has been disowned by his family.  Although Rhett is clearly attracted towards her, Scarlett vows that he will never win her.  As troops from the northern states begin their attack on Atlanta, Scarlett flees with her sister and Rhett.   The indomitable Scarlett is convinced that all will be well once they reach her former home, but on arriving there all she sees is devastation and penury.  The plantation has been pillaged by the northern troops, her mother is dead, and her father is a broken man.  Her life in tatters, Scarlett refuses to be beaten.  She swears that she will do whatever it takes never to be poor again...

One of the most highly regarded films to come out of Hollywood in its glorious heyday, certainly one of the most expensive and best publicised, Gone with the Wind has lost none of its power to overwhelm the spectator with its epic scale, stunning production values and a searing portrayal of a woman whose attempts to rebuild her antebellum prosperity frustrate her personal happiness.   A precursor to the modern Hollywood blockbuster, it is a raging juggernaut of a film, a cinematic tsunami which, despite several obvious shortcomings, manages to enrapture its audience by offering one of the most satisfying movie experiences imaginable. 

The film is a testament to the extraordinary ambition and vision of the independent producer David O. Selznick.  He was prepared to pay an unprecedented fifty thousand dollars to buy the rights to Margaret Mitchell’s novel even before the book became a major bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize.  With a five month shooting schedule and a cast that included over 2000 extras, the film ultimately cost just under four million dollars to make, but grossed in excess of twenty times that amount, making it both one of the most expensive films and one of the most profitable in cinema history.  

It took two years to cast the leading lady for what would be the most coveted female role of all time.  Around 1500 actresses were considered for the part, including many established and rising stars, such as Bette Davis, Katheryn Hepburn and Paulette Godard.  The part ultimately went to an English actress who was virtually unknown in America at the time, Vivien Leigh.  Clark Gable, an actor with major box office appeal, was Selznick’s preferred actor for the lead male role after his first choice, Gary Cooper, proved to be unavailable.  The other main roles were taken by Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland, both big name actors at the time. 

The casting of Howard is perhaps the film’s biggest flaw – the actor, cocooned in his cool British reserve and incapable of delivering even the crudest approximation to a southern US accent, is completely eclipsed by his more charismatic co-stars and is unconvincing as Scarlett O’Hara’s object of desire.   By contrast, Vivien Leigh absolutely dominates the film and, in possibly the greatest performance of her career, makes her character harrowingly believable.  Scarlett O’Hara may not be the most sympathetic of screen heroines, but it is hard not to empathise with her passions - her anger, her anguish and her ultimate sense of loss.

The production difficulties of Gone with the Wind are well documented.  Three weeks into the shoot, director George Cukor was sacked by Selznick when Clark Gable refused to work with what he considered a "women’s director".  Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming, who had been directing The Wizard of Oz for MGM.  Fleming fell ill through exhaustion and another director, Sam Wood, had to stand in for a fortnight until he recovered.  When he took over from Cukor, Fleming insisted on a complete rewrite of Sidney Howard’s original screenplay, something that Selznick, with an eye on the budget, was reluctant to agree to.  The story is that Fleming, Selznick and hired screenwriter Ben Hecht locked themselves in a room for five days and completely redrafted the script, although it was Sidney Howard who would get the sole writer’s credit in the film’s opening captions.

A carefully orchestrated publicity campaign contributed to the enormous box office receipts the film earned when it went on general release in 1941, following its legendary premiere in Atlanta in 1939.  (A sad footnote is that the black members of the cast were unable to attend the premiere owing to a Georgia State Law which prohibited coloureds from sitting with whites in public cinemas.)  The film’s commercial success was matched by a favourable critical reaction, culminating in its winning ten Academy Awards, a record that was not beaten until Ben-Hur came along twenty years later.  The film garnered Oscars in most of the major categories -  Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best  (Color) Cinematography, Best Actress (Vivien Leigh) – as well as an award for Hattie McDaniel in her supporting role, the first African American to be nominated for and win an Oscar.

There is something strangely prescient about this film, its portrayal of a world changing forever amid the turmoil of war having a direct equivalent in the events of the early 1940s as, once again, the world went to war.  Scarlett O’Hara’s impassioned declaration at the end of the first part of the film, where she states she will not be beaten by adversity, would have had an immediate resonance for anyone watching the film in those turbulent and desperate years. 

Gone with the Wind is a triumph of Hollywood moviemaking at its flamboyant best, a film that continue to excite reviewers and enthral audiences across the world.   It is a genuine classic which appeals at so many levels, combining a poignant melodrama with some breathtaking colour cinematography, its emotional power heightened by one of the most memorable score’s in film history.  Here is a film that can be summed up in just one word.  Epic.

© James Travers 2009

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