Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American epic historical romance film adapted from the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell. The film was produced by David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures and directed by Victor Fleming. Set in the American South against the backdrop of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the film tells the story of Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh), the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, following her romantic pursuit of Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), who is married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland), and her subsequent marriage to Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).
Gone with the Wind
- December 15, 1939 (Atlanta premiere)
- 221 minutes
- 234–238 minutes (with overture, intermission, entr'acte, and exit music)
United States
English
$3.85 million
>$390 million
The film had a troubled production. The start of filming was delayed for two years until January 1939 because Selznick was determined to secure Gable for the role of Rhett, and concluded in July. The role of Scarlett was challenging to cast, and 1,400 unknown women were interviewed for the part. Sidney Howard's original screenplay underwent many revisions by several writers to reduce it to a suitable length. The original director, George Cukor, was fired shortly after filming began and was replaced by Fleming, who in turn was briefly replaced by Sam Wood while taking some time off due to exhaustion. Post-production concluded in November 1939, just a month before its premiere.
It received generally positive reviews upon its release on December 15, 1939. While the casting was widely praised, the long running time received criticism. At the 12th Academy Awards, Gone with the Wind received ten Academy Awards (eight competitive, two honorary) from thirteen nominations, including wins for Best Picture, Best Director (Fleming), Best Adapted Screenplay (posthumously awarded to Sidney Howard), Best Actress (Leigh), and Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel, becoming the first African American to win an Academy Award). It set records for the total number of wins and nominations at the time.
Gone with the Wind was immensely popular when first released. It became the highest-earning film made up to that point and held the record for over a quarter of a century. When adjusted for monetary inflation, it is still the highest-grossing film in history. It was re-released periodically throughout the 20th century and became ingrained in popular culture. Although the film has been criticized as historical negationism, glorifying slavery and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy myth, it has been credited with triggering changes in the way in which African Americans were depicted cinematically. Gone with the Wind is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, and in 1989, became one of the twenty-five inaugural films selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Plot[edit]
In 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War, Scarlett O'Hara lives at Tara, her family's cotton plantation in Georgia, with her parents, two sisters, and their many black slaves. Scarlett is deeply attracted to Ashley Wilkes and learns he is to be married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. At an engagement party the next day at Ashley's home, Twelve Oaks, a nearby plantation, Scarlett makes an advance on Ashley but is rebuffed; however, she catches the attention of another guest, Rhett Butler. The party is disrupted by news of President Lincoln's call for volunteers to fight the South, and the Southern men rush to enlist. Scarlett marries Melanie's younger brother, Charles, to arouse jealousy in Ashley before he leaves to fight. Following Charles's death while serving in the Confederate States Army, Scarlett's mother sends her to the Hamilton home in Atlanta. She creates a scene by attending a charity bazaar in mourning attire and waltzing with Rhett, now a blockade runner for the Confederacy.
The tide of war turns against the Confederacy after the Battle of Gettysburg. Many of the men of Scarlett's town are killed. Eight months later, as the Union Army besieges the city in the Atlanta campaign, Melanie gives birth with Scarlett's aid, and Rhett helps them flee the city. Rhett chooses to go off to fight, leaving Scarlett to make her own way back to Tara. She finds Tara deserted, except for her father, sisters, and former slaves, Mammy and Pork. Scarlett learns that her mother has just died of typhoid fever, and her father has lost his mind. With Tara pillaged by Union troops and the fields untended, Scarlett vows to ensure her and her family's survival.
With the defeat of the Confederacy, the O'Haras toil in the cotton fields. Ashley returns but finds he is of little help to Tara. When Scarlett begs him to run away with her, he confesses his desire for her and kisses her passionately but says he cannot leave Melanie. Scarlett's father attempts to chase away a carpetbagger from his land but is thrown from his horse and killed. Unable to pay the Reconstructionist taxes imposed on Tara, Scarlett unsuccessfully appeals to Rhett, then dupes her younger sister Suellen's fiancé, the middle-aged and wealthy general store owner Frank Kennedy, into marrying her. Frank, Ashley, Rhett, and several other accomplices make a night raid on a shanty town after Scarlett is attacked while driving through it alone, resulting in Frank's death. Shortly after Frank's funeral, Rhett proposes to Scarlett, and she accepts.
Rhett and Scarlett have a daughter whom Rhett nicknames Bonnie Blue, but Scarlett still pines for Ashley and, chagrined at the perceived ruin of her figure, refuses to have any more children or share a bed with Rhett. One day at Frank's mill, Ashley's sister, India, sees Scarlett and Ashley embracing. Harboring an intense dislike of Scarlett, India eagerly spreads rumors. Later that evening, Rhett, having heard the rumors, forces Scarlett to attend Ashley's birthday party. Melanie, however, stands by Scarlett. After returning home, Scarlett finds Rhett downstairs drunk, and they argue about Ashley. Rhett kisses Scarlett against her will, stating his intent to have sex with her that night, and carries the struggling Scarlett to the bedroom.
The next day, Rhett apologizes for his behavior and offers Scarlett a divorce, which she rejects, saying it would be a disgrace. When Rhett returns from an extended trip to London, England, Scarlett informs him that she is pregnant, but an argument ensues, resulting in her falling down a flight of stairs and suffering a miscarriage. While recovering, tragedy strikes again when Bonnie dies while attempting to jump a fence with her pony. Scarlett and Rhett visit Melanie, who has suffered complications from a new pregnancy, on her deathbed. As Scarlett consoles Ashley, Rhett prepares to leave Atlanta. Having realized that it was Rhett, and not Ashley, whom she truly loved all along, Scarlett pleads with Rhett to stay, but he rebuffs her and walks away into the morning fog. A distraught Scarlett resolves to return home to Tara, vowing to one day win Rhett back.
Release[edit]
Preview, premiere, and initial release[edit]
On September 9, 1939, Selznick, his wife, Irene, investor John "Jock" Whitney, and film editor Hal Kern drove out to Riverside, California to preview the film at the Fox Theatre. The film was still a rough cut at this stage, missing completed titles and needing special optical effects. It ran for four hours and twenty-five minutes; it was later cut to under four hours for its proper release. A double bill of Hawaiian Nights and Beau Geste was playing, but after the first feature it was announced that instead of the second bill, the theater would be screening a preview of an unnamed upcoming film; the audience were informed they could leave but would not be readmitted once the film had begun, nor would phone calls be allowed once the theater had been sealed. When the title appeared on the screen, the audience cheered, and after it had ended, the film received a standing ovation.[7][30] In his biography of Selznick, David Thomson wrote that the audience's response before the film had even started "was the greatest moment of [Selznick's] life, the greatest victory and redemption of all his failings",[31] with Selznick describing the preview cards as "probably the most amazing any picture has ever had".[32] When Selznick was asked by the press in early September how he felt about the film, he said: "At noon I think it's divine, at midnight I think it's lousy. Sometimes I think it's the greatest picture ever made. But if it's only a great picture, I'll still be satisfied".[26]
Analysis and controversies[edit]
Historical portrayal[edit]
Gone with the Wind has been criticized as having perpetuated Civil War myths and black stereotypes.[103] David Reynolds wrote that "The white women are elegant, their menfolk are noble or at least dashing. And, in the background, the black slaves are mostly dutiful and content, clearly incapable of an independent existence." Reynolds likened Gone with the Wind to The Birth of a Nation and other re-imaginings of the South during the era of segregation, in which white Southerners are portrayed as defending traditional values, and the issue of slavery is largely ignored.[64] The film has been described as a "regression" that promotes both the myth of the black rapist and the honorable and defensive role of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction,[104] and as a "social propaganda" film offering a "white supremacist" view of the past.[103]
From 1972 to 1996, the Atlanta Historical Society held several Gone with the Wind exhibits, among them a 1994 exhibit which was titled "Disputed Territories: Gone with the Wind and Southern Myths". One of the questions that was explored by the exhibit was "How True to Life Were the Slaves in GWTW?" This section showed that slave experiences were diverse and, as a result, it concluded that the "happy darky" was a myth, as was the belief that all slaves experienced violence and brutality.[105]
W. Bryan Rommel Ruiz has argued that despite factual inaccuracies in depicting the Reconstruction period, Gone with the Wind reflects contemporary interpretations of it that were common in the early 20th century. One such viewpoint is reflected in a brief scene in which Mammy fends off a leering freedman: a politician can be heard offering forty acres and a mule to the emancipated slaves in exchange for their votes. The inference is taken to mean that freedmen are ignorant about politics and unprepared for freedom, unwittingly becoming the tools of corrupt Reconstruction officials. While perpetuating some Lost Cause myths, the film makes concessions with regard to others. After the attack on Scarlett in the shanty town, a group of men, including Scarlett's husband Frank, Rhett Butler, and Ashley, raid the town; in the novel, they belong to the Ku Klux Klan, representing the common trope of protecting the white woman's virtue, but the filmmakers consciously neutralize the presence of the Klan in the film by simply referring to it as a "political meeting".[106]
Thomas Cripps reasons that in some respects, the film undercuts racial stereotypes;[107] in particular, the film created greater engagement between Hollywood and black audiences,[107] with dozens of films making small gestures in recognition of the emerging trend.[62] Only a few weeks after its initial run, a story editor at Warner wrote a memorandum to Walter Wanger about Mississippi Belle, a script that contained the worst excesses of plantation films, suggesting that Gone with the Wind had made the film "unproducible". More than any film since The Birth of a Nation, it unleashed a variety of social forces that foreshadowed an alliance of white liberals and black people who encouraged the expectation that black people would one day achieve equality. According to Cripps, the film eventually became a template for measuring social change.[62]
21st-century reappraisal[edit]
In the 21st century, criticism of the film's depictions of race and slavery curtailed its availability. In 2017, Gone with the Wind was pulled from the schedule at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee after a 34-year run of annual showings.[108][109] On June 9, 2020, the film was removed from HBO Max in response to an op-ed written by screenwriter John Ridley that was published in that day's edition of the Los Angeles Times, which called for the streaming service to temporarily remove the film from its content library. He wrote that "it continues to give cover to those who falsely claim that clinging to the iconography of the plantation era is a matter of 'heritage, not hate.'"[110][111][112] A spokesperson for HBO Max said that the film was "a product of its time" and as a result, it depicted "ethnic and racial prejudices" that "were wrong then and are wrong today". It was also announced that the film would return to the streaming service at a later date, although it would incorporate "a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable, and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history."[113]
The film's removal sparked a debate about political correctness going too far, with film critics and historians criticizing HBO as engaging in censorship.[114] Following its withdrawal, the film reached the top of Amazon's best-sellers sales chart for TV and films, and fifth place on Apple's iTunes Store film chart.[115] HBO Max returned the film to its service later that month, with a new introduction by Jacqueline Stewart.[116] Stewart described the film, in an op-ed for CNN, as "a prime text for examining expressions of white supremacy in popular culture", and said that "it is precisely because of the ongoing, painful patterns of racial injustice and disregard for Black lives that Gone with the Wind should stay in circulation and remain available for viewing, analysis and discussion." She described the controversy as "an opportunity to think about what classic films can teach us."[117]
At a political rally in February 2020, President Donald Trump criticized the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, stating that Gone with the Wind and Sunset Boulevard (1950) were more deserving of the award for Best Picture than that year's winner, the South Korean film Parasite.
His comments elicited commentary from critics, and a writer for Entropy magazine opined that they had sparked a backlash from pundits across the political spectrum on social media.[118]
Depiction of marital rape[edit]
One of the most notorious and widely condemned scenes in Gone with the Wind depicts what is now legally defined as "marital rape".[119][120] The scene begins with Scarlett and Rhett at the bottom of the staircase, where he begins to kiss her, refusing to be told "no" by the struggling Scarlett;[121][122] Rhett ignores her resistance, scolds her and carries her up the stairs to the bedroom,[121][122] where the audience is left in no doubt that she will "get what's coming to her".[123] The next scene, the following morning, shows Scarlett glowing with barely suppressed sexual satisfaction;[121][122][123] Rhett apologizes for his behavior, blaming it on his drinking.[121] The scene has been accused of combining romance and rape by making them indistinguishable from each other,[121] and of reinforcing a notion about forced sex: that women secretly enjoy it, and it is an acceptable way for a man to treat his wife.[123]
Film critic Molly Haskell has argued that, nevertheless, for women who are uncritical of the scene, it is by and large consistent with what they have in mind if they fantasize about being raped. Their fantasies revolve around love and romance rather than forced sex; they will assume that Scarlett was not an unwilling sexual partner and wanted Rhett to take the initiative and insist on having sexual intercourse.[124]