Beware, spoilers ahead.
Fact: Gone with the Wind won nine Academy Awards in 1940,
including Best Actress in a Leading Role (Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara),
Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Hattie McDaniel as Mammy), Best Director
(Victor Fleming), and Best Picture.
Fact: Gone with the Wind was nominated for an additional five Academy
Awards, including Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Clark Gable as Rhett Butler),
Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Olivia de Havilland as Melanie Hamilton),
and Best Music, Original Score (Max Steiner).
Fact: Gone with the Wind won the 1989 People’s Choice Award for Favorite
All-Time Motion Picture. Fact: Gone with
the Wind is still one of the most celebrated classic films in the history of
the industry. The portrayal of Civil War
South, the costume design, and the technical achievements in colorization and
use of coordinated equipment, to this day, still affect filmmaking, fashion,
and literature, and that’s not the half of its influence! 
But why? Sure, I’ll
give the special effects, set, location, costuming, film editing, music, et
cetera, kudos to the sky, but the story itself is so depressing. I’d never seen it before this release. I’d heard about it plenty, though. My mother warned me that I’d get annoyed with
Scarlett O’Hara’s voice; my friends in college raved about the romance and epic
quality of the film; Scarlett herself was discussed at length as either the
most cold-hearted, mercenary human on the planet, or the epitome of a driven,
clever, shrewd businesswoman. But no one ever told me that Rhett Butler’s
famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” was delivered at the END
of the film. I always thought part of
the movie was convincing him to give a damn. |
| Mammy and Scarlett |
Yet when I watched Gone with the Wind yesterday, what struck me
most was not the romance, not the glorious plantations, not the horror and
devastation of war, and not the grand scope of the story. It was Scarlett herself, her interactions
with all the people around her, as a tragic figure in true Shakespearean
form. All Shakespeare’s tragic
protagonists start at a height and gradually fall, or get torn down, to depths
they didn’t know they could plunge. Lear
was the king of Britain, but when he gave his kingdom to his daughters, they
stripped him of his entourage, his dignity, and his sanity. MacBeth was the favorite of a Danish king,
but a prophecy and an ambitious wife enticed him to murder. Titus Andronicus was the mightiest general of
the Roman army, but he chose the wrong successor as emperor, and a prisoner
queen took revenge on him and his family, even so far as to make him cut off
his own hand. Hamlet lost friends,
family, and his lover. Othello strangled
the woman he loved. All of these, and
practically every other principle character, end up killed by homicide or
suicide. While Scarlett O’Hara doesn’t
meet so grisly a fate, she does plummet from majesty to poverty, and then rises
from starving waif to wealthy businesswoman only to plummet again, having
practically everything stripped from her – her first husband, her home, her
family, and her innocence all in the first act, and then her second husband,
her friends, her reputation, her unborn child, her daughter, and finally, her
third husband, Rhett, in the second act.
 |
| Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara Butler |
I feel both repulsed by and profoundly sorry for
Scarlett. She seems to expect that
people will forgive her no matter what she does. She treats emotional entanglement with a
married man as something romantic and talks of running away with him as though
it’s acceptable. She coerces, cajoles,
manipulates, lies, cries, complains, and criticizes throughout the entire film,
with only a few moments revealing her true heart. I think that’s what made me finally pity
her. After all the fear and pain and
misery she endured, physical and emotional, she and Rhett constantly allowed
their pride to forbid forgiveness.
There’s a moment when Scarlett wakes up in the morning after a night of
passion with her husband Rhett, and she’s actually HAPPY about it, but when he
comes in, he doesn’t seem to see the light in her eyes and the glow in her
face; he sarcastically apologizes for his drunkenness and informs her that he’s
leaving for London and taking their daughter with him. Immediately, the wall of self-preservation
comes up to blot out her smile and her laugh.
There’s another moment, when Rhett and the daughter return from London,
where Scarlett shows such relief and joy at his return, but he makes a snide
comment and the wall is thrown back up. Conversely,
on Rhett’s side, when Scarlett has an accident and miscarries, she grows
deliriously ill, and he worries and worries over her, hoping she’ll call for
him, but no one ever comes to say she has.
What kills me is that SHE DID CALL; the film shows her tossing and
turning and saying his name, but no one actually goes to get him. I think that may have pissed me off
most. So much of their marital anguish
and misunderstanding could have been avoided if one of them actually showed
genuine compassion for the other despite his sarcasm or her dramatics.
 |
| Ashley Wilks and Scarlett O'Hara |
Rhett is also a complex character. When we first meet him at Twelve Oaks (the Wilks' plantation), he gives off a creepy, greasy, predator-like vibe. He witnesses the exchange between Scarlett and Ashley and finds it funny. He pursues Scarlett as soon as she's first widowed, making a spectacle of her (though she quite enjoys it). He's mercenary and sarcastic and unscrupulous. When the war reaches Atlanta, he demonstrates courage and sacrifice and finally confesses that he loves Scarlett, though we know from his own admission that he's "not a marrying man." Later, he tries to take her as his mistress, but she won't have it. When she's widowed a second time, he doesn't waste time actually marrying her even though he knows she's still madly in love with Ashley. When he becomes a father, though, I felt like all his protective pretenses fell away and the audience could see who he truly was - an insightful, intelligent businessman who loves to spoil the women in his life. I disliked him intensely at the beginning because of his flippancy and his disrespect, but ended up wanting him to be happy.
 |
| Olivia de Havilland as Melanie Hamilton |
Frankly, there were only two characters in the whole movie I
liked. The first was Melanie Hamilton,
later Melanie Wilks, the woman who marries Ashley Wilks (Leslie Howard), the
object of Scarlett’s long-suffering adoration.
She’s the only truly kind person in the entire South, as far as I can
tell. She constantly thinks the best of
everyone; treats slaves, prostitutes, socialites, and plantation owners with
equal respect; and defends those she loves from slander, even if the slander is
true. I adored her every second she appeared on screen. Her compassion,
gentleness, and wisdom were the perfect foil for Scarlett’s selfishness,
conceit, and abuse of others. I cried
hardest when she died. The second
character I liked was Mammy, Scarlett’s sort-of nanny – a house slave. She’d lived with the O’Hara’s since before
Scarlett was born, and when Mr. and Mrs. O’Hara died, she went with Scarlett
and her second husband (whom she stole from her sister) to Atlanta and stayed
with her even after the second husband died and Scarlett married Rhett. She always gave Scarlett the piece of her
mind she needed to hear, and had no qualms about challenging her on her
behavior. But she was also a mother to
Scarlett, a nurse when she fell ill, a protector, and a guardian.
While I dislike Scarlett, I LOATHE Prissy, one of the house slaves from Atlanta. Her voice is as high-pitched as a child's scream; she blatantly deceives Scarlett about her qualifications; she works at a snail's pace even though circumstances demand urgency; and then on top of everything else, after Scarlett takes charge and delivers Melanie's baby practically by herself, Prissy goes to fetch Rhett to help them escape the city and has the gall to LIE and say SHE delivered the baby and "Scarlett helped a little." I wanted her to die so much. At least we only have to put up with her until they get back to Tara (the O'Hara plantation). She fades into the background and we never have to listen to her again.
While Gone with the Wind is indeed an impressive
cinematographic achievement, especially regarding technical innovation and
costume design, the plot and character development are certainly not cheerful. There are understated and meaningful
interactions among the characters, even dexterous commentaries on human
morality, survival, and loyalty, but I felt an intense sense of loss as the
exit music played. This movie broke my
heart. Scarlett O’Hara will forever be
to me one of the most tragic figures in cinematic history; honestly, I don’t see
how she’d ever get Rhett back after all she’d done. Words would be meaningless to him. How did he put it? “You think that by saying,
‘I’m sorry,’ all past can be corrected.”
While I’m not a fan of tragedies, Gone with the Wind is still an
exquisite movie – the subtlety, the nuance, the gradual accumulation of tension
is so profound that at the end, when everything falls to pieces, I wept for
Scarlett, not because I liked her, but because I pitied her so much, and pitied
the people whose lives she ruined. It is
a masterpiece, and while it won’t be something you’ll often be in the mood to
watch, it’s still worth including in your collection.
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