Gone With The Wind Revisited
Jan. 12th, 2005 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI first read Gone With the Wind when I was nine, and saw the movie later that same year. I don't know how many times I watched it since then. Last week, I brought the special edition DVDs (four in all), and let me tell you, no matter how often one has seen this film on TV or in the cinema during one of the periodic reruns, the way they went digital with it is a minor miracle. The startling clarity of the colours is as if the thing had been shot last year.
Of course, the viewing experience changes with the years anyway. When I was nine, I had no idea about American history, let alone the Civil War, outside of the mythical Wild West I had read about in Karl May (for non-Germans: the man single-handedly responsible for us sympathizing with the Indians and their tragic fate long before we ever get to see a John Wayne movie; mind you, this might change with the next generation, but the three before me plus mine own sobbed for the invented Apache chief Winnetou). Consequently, I had no problem with "the Yankees" (who they were supposed to be, I didn't know, either - I knew the whole story took place in the US, but that was it) being the bad guys. Or slavery as a benevolent institution, whose right of existence wasn't questioned except in the exchange between Scarlett and Ashley re: using prisoners for labour post-war. Or with the presentation of the Klu-Klux-Klan (which didn't make it into the film; David Selznick, somewhat more sensitive on this topic than Margaret Mitchell, removed all references to the Klan, and the male characters belonging to same) as a Robin-Hood-like organisation determined to protect the local population against unsavoury "Yankees", "carpetbaggers" and, of course… Oh, and if Scarlett hadn't reflected at one point that her mother had never wanted her to use the term "nigger", I wouldn't have known that this had a negative connotation, either.
Fast forward to my teenage years, and it had dawned to me that Gone With The Wind was, shall we say, very partisan as far as the historical background was concerned. At that point, I hadn't just read Uncle Tom's Cabin, I had read Roots. And had learned some history in school. This did not stop me from enjoying the story, though. As I now could test again, it still doesn't. I don't know why the ideological subtext of films like Hero spoils my viewing experience, no matter how beautiful the aesthetics and performances are, but I can take the positions in GWTW without a stride. I'm not completely sure why.
Back in the day, Scarlett O'Hara was the first flawed heroine I had encountered. In all novels I had read up to that point, Melanie would have been the heroine, and Scarlett would have been the evil Other Woman. They certainly wouldn't have ended up as friends. There wasn't a question of identification with Scarlett (or Melanie, for that matter) when I read the book, and then watched the movie, but I was fascinated by her. Selfish, manipulative, passionate Scarlett who still kept her promise to look after Melanie and Melanie's baby (and it never seemed to occur to her to rid herself of Melanie during childbirth) and her vow that neither she nor her folk would ever be hungry again. Scarlett whose flaws I was invited to recognize (they were listed by Rhett on a regular basis, after all), who went from spoiled brat to tough survivor, and had a train wreck of a love life not for the reasons that the other heroines had done (i.e. because of evil outside interference), but mostly due to her own fault. That was completely new to me then.
Decades later: my sympathy for Scarlett has rather grown than diminished throughout the years, despite all the other flawed heroines I've encountered since then. With Rhett, the reverse is true. As a child and teenager, I just couldn't understand why Scarlett didn't recognize at once they were made for each other and thought he was irresistible myself. In the next fifteen years, it started to occur to me, when rereading the novel rather than rewatching the film, that Rhett was something of a hypocrite. Daring Scarlett to be unconventional and true to herself early on and then condemning her for those same things once they're married and Bonnie is born. Leaving her, Melanie and the children between two armies because he wants to fight for the South after all. (I'd have slapped him, too.)
This problem of a lack of sympathy for Rhett is somewhat solved for me when watching the film due to the tried and true Clark Gable charisma. Gable was on the height of his popularity at that point, the first star to be called "the King", oozing male sexiness from every pore. It still works. But he's not the one who carries the movie.
There is the minor matter of Scarlett being described as "not conventionally beautiful" in the book (something that would get copied over and over again), and Vivien Leigh being breathtakingly beautiful in every sense of the word, but who cares? As one of the documentaries in the special edition puts it, her beauty only kept a lot of critics at the time from noticing her acting talent. Scarlett was the most sought after female role of the era, and no doubt many of the actresses in competition of the role would have given good performances in it. But we were ever so lucky the ambitious young woman from England got it. She could do so much with the expression of her eyes alone - for example in that shot when Scarlett watches Ashley and Melanie ascend the stairs. The quick mood changes, the gestures resulting from it, as when Mammy makes her "I didn't notice Mr. Ashley asking to marry you" jab and Scarlett goes from upbeat and teasing to angry (and eating, which was Mammy's purpose), complete with that gesture of throwing her umbrella away - it could have so easily seemed staged, or over the top, in a diva fashion. When I watch it on screen, it's nothing but a tempestuous young girl (Scarlett is sixteen when the film opens), and it's Vivien Leigh making it so. She has a wonderful comic timing in scenes like a tipsy, hiccupy Scarlett accepting Rhett's proposal, and a great subtlety in the tragic or dramatic scenes, as when Scarlett realizes her father Gerald has gone mad and that everything and everyone depends on her now. No dialogue tells us this, it's just her change of expression after Gerald says "we'll ask Mrs. O'Hara".
The other person carrying the movie to me is Olivia de Havilland as Melanie. Melanie is so much the embodiment of goodness that she could come across as syrupy, or too good to be true, or as stupid in her faith in Scarlett. (A short aside here: as has repeatedly been observed, Scarlett and Melanie owe something to Becky and Amelia in Thackeray's Vanity Fair. But Thackeray had no true narrative sympathy for either woman, and so Becky is just a cold bitch, and Amelia an insufferable useless twit. They certainly never have a real bond.) Not so here, neither in the book nor in the film. Olivia de Havilland makes Melanie's saintliness believable and appealing, and really conveys that quiet strength that enables Melanie to go on. In the scene just after Scarlett has shot the deserter and we see Melanie, who has also heard the noise, came with her brother's old sword, you know that she would have used it, too, if necessary, and the look between her and Scarlett is really the moment where their relationship shifts and cements. It's said relationship that frames the film as much as the one between Scarlett and Rhett, or Scarlett and Ashley, and so of course it's Melanie's death that heralds the end of the story.
Other observations upon rewatching and starting some of the documentaries:
- Lesley Howard doesn't look quite as the 46 years he was at that point, but he's still far too old for Ashley, who is supposed to have grown up with Scarlett
- Watching Hattie MacDaniels accepting her Oscar for best supporting actress and seeing her in tears saying she hopes she'll always be a credit to her race brings up a lump in my throat and massive being a white Caucasian guilt
- That famous shot moving from Scarlett up and up and up to show all the wounded soldiers lying on the ground moaning is still as effective as ever
- For a film that was entirely shot in the backlot, they managed to convey the illusion of being outdoors beautifully
- David Thomson wrote the narration for the "Making of" documentary, and one can tell. His David Selznick biography is the one of his works I like best, as he spares us all the self-inserts and judgments on whom he finds and doesn't find attractive which (dis)grace his biographies of Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles, and he does convey a lot of Selznick's and the others personalities here, too.
- I can see why they got cut out (time!), but I always regret the lack of more Tarletons and Fontaines
- This must be the only Civil War story without a single battle scene, choosing to portray the civilian pov instead
- Ah, the joys of censorship; am not surprised David Selznick had to fight to keep the famous "I don't give a damn" in (a curse in the days of the Hays office being a forbidden thing)
- They managed to convey Belle Watling was a prostitute without once using the word or a synonym, too
- Ben Hecht, you might not have read the book, but adding "Frankly" was a masterful touch
- Four directors all in all, hundreds of rewrites by various sources and never, till the last retake, a single "final" shooting script - this film sounds like a recipe for a disaster, and it's still a miracle the result is so good instead of the 30s equivalent of Batman and Robin .
Of course, the viewing experience changes with the years anyway. When I was nine, I had no idea about American history, let alone the Civil War, outside of the mythical Wild West I had read about in Karl May (for non-Germans: the man single-handedly responsible for us sympathizing with the Indians and their tragic fate long before we ever get to see a John Wayne movie; mind you, this might change with the next generation, but the three before me plus mine own sobbed for the invented Apache chief Winnetou). Consequently, I had no problem with "the Yankees" (who they were supposed to be, I didn't know, either - I knew the whole story took place in the US, but that was it) being the bad guys. Or slavery as a benevolent institution, whose right of existence wasn't questioned except in the exchange between Scarlett and Ashley re: using prisoners for labour post-war. Or with the presentation of the Klu-Klux-Klan (which didn't make it into the film; David Selznick, somewhat more sensitive on this topic than Margaret Mitchell, removed all references to the Klan, and the male characters belonging to same) as a Robin-Hood-like organisation determined to protect the local population against unsavoury "Yankees", "carpetbaggers" and, of course… Oh, and if Scarlett hadn't reflected at one point that her mother had never wanted her to use the term "nigger", I wouldn't have known that this had a negative connotation, either.
Fast forward to my teenage years, and it had dawned to me that Gone With The Wind was, shall we say, very partisan as far as the historical background was concerned. At that point, I hadn't just read Uncle Tom's Cabin, I had read Roots. And had learned some history in school. This did not stop me from enjoying the story, though. As I now could test again, it still doesn't. I don't know why the ideological subtext of films like Hero spoils my viewing experience, no matter how beautiful the aesthetics and performances are, but I can take the positions in GWTW without a stride. I'm not completely sure why.
Back in the day, Scarlett O'Hara was the first flawed heroine I had encountered. In all novels I had read up to that point, Melanie would have been the heroine, and Scarlett would have been the evil Other Woman. They certainly wouldn't have ended up as friends. There wasn't a question of identification with Scarlett (or Melanie, for that matter) when I read the book, and then watched the movie, but I was fascinated by her. Selfish, manipulative, passionate Scarlett who still kept her promise to look after Melanie and Melanie's baby (and it never seemed to occur to her to rid herself of Melanie during childbirth) and her vow that neither she nor her folk would ever be hungry again. Scarlett whose flaws I was invited to recognize (they were listed by Rhett on a regular basis, after all), who went from spoiled brat to tough survivor, and had a train wreck of a love life not for the reasons that the other heroines had done (i.e. because of evil outside interference), but mostly due to her own fault. That was completely new to me then.
Decades later: my sympathy for Scarlett has rather grown than diminished throughout the years, despite all the other flawed heroines I've encountered since then. With Rhett, the reverse is true. As a child and teenager, I just couldn't understand why Scarlett didn't recognize at once they were made for each other and thought he was irresistible myself. In the next fifteen years, it started to occur to me, when rereading the novel rather than rewatching the film, that Rhett was something of a hypocrite. Daring Scarlett to be unconventional and true to herself early on and then condemning her for those same things once they're married and Bonnie is born. Leaving her, Melanie and the children between two armies because he wants to fight for the South after all. (I'd have slapped him, too.)
This problem of a lack of sympathy for Rhett is somewhat solved for me when watching the film due to the tried and true Clark Gable charisma. Gable was on the height of his popularity at that point, the first star to be called "the King", oozing male sexiness from every pore. It still works. But he's not the one who carries the movie.
There is the minor matter of Scarlett being described as "not conventionally beautiful" in the book (something that would get copied over and over again), and Vivien Leigh being breathtakingly beautiful in every sense of the word, but who cares? As one of the documentaries in the special edition puts it, her beauty only kept a lot of critics at the time from noticing her acting talent. Scarlett was the most sought after female role of the era, and no doubt many of the actresses in competition of the role would have given good performances in it. But we were ever so lucky the ambitious young woman from England got it. She could do so much with the expression of her eyes alone - for example in that shot when Scarlett watches Ashley and Melanie ascend the stairs. The quick mood changes, the gestures resulting from it, as when Mammy makes her "I didn't notice Mr. Ashley asking to marry you" jab and Scarlett goes from upbeat and teasing to angry (and eating, which was Mammy's purpose), complete with that gesture of throwing her umbrella away - it could have so easily seemed staged, or over the top, in a diva fashion. When I watch it on screen, it's nothing but a tempestuous young girl (Scarlett is sixteen when the film opens), and it's Vivien Leigh making it so. She has a wonderful comic timing in scenes like a tipsy, hiccupy Scarlett accepting Rhett's proposal, and a great subtlety in the tragic or dramatic scenes, as when Scarlett realizes her father Gerald has gone mad and that everything and everyone depends on her now. No dialogue tells us this, it's just her change of expression after Gerald says "we'll ask Mrs. O'Hara".
The other person carrying the movie to me is Olivia de Havilland as Melanie. Melanie is so much the embodiment of goodness that she could come across as syrupy, or too good to be true, or as stupid in her faith in Scarlett. (A short aside here: as has repeatedly been observed, Scarlett and Melanie owe something to Becky and Amelia in Thackeray's Vanity Fair. But Thackeray had no true narrative sympathy for either woman, and so Becky is just a cold bitch, and Amelia an insufferable useless twit. They certainly never have a real bond.) Not so here, neither in the book nor in the film. Olivia de Havilland makes Melanie's saintliness believable and appealing, and really conveys that quiet strength that enables Melanie to go on. In the scene just after Scarlett has shot the deserter and we see Melanie, who has also heard the noise, came with her brother's old sword, you know that she would have used it, too, if necessary, and the look between her and Scarlett is really the moment where their relationship shifts and cements. It's said relationship that frames the film as much as the one between Scarlett and Rhett, or Scarlett and Ashley, and so of course it's Melanie's death that heralds the end of the story.
Other observations upon rewatching and starting some of the documentaries:
- Lesley Howard doesn't look quite as the 46 years he was at that point, but he's still far too old for Ashley, who is supposed to have grown up with Scarlett
- Watching Hattie MacDaniels accepting her Oscar for best supporting actress and seeing her in tears saying she hopes she'll always be a credit to her race brings up a lump in my throat and massive being a white Caucasian guilt
- That famous shot moving from Scarlett up and up and up to show all the wounded soldiers lying on the ground moaning is still as effective as ever
- For a film that was entirely shot in the backlot, they managed to convey the illusion of being outdoors beautifully
- David Thomson wrote the narration for the "Making of" documentary, and one can tell. His David Selznick biography is the one of his works I like best, as he spares us all the self-inserts and judgments on whom he finds and doesn't find attractive which (dis)grace his biographies of Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles, and he does convey a lot of Selznick's and the others personalities here, too.
- I can see why they got cut out (time!), but I always regret the lack of more Tarletons and Fontaines
- This must be the only Civil War story without a single battle scene, choosing to portray the civilian pov instead
- Ah, the joys of censorship; am not surprised David Selznick had to fight to keep the famous "I don't give a damn" in (a curse in the days of the Hays office being a forbidden thing)
- They managed to convey Belle Watling was a prostitute without once using the word or a synonym, too
- Ben Hecht, you might not have read the book, but adding "Frankly" was a masterful touch
- Four directors all in all, hundreds of rewrites by various sources and never, till the last retake, a single "final" shooting script - this film sounds like a recipe for a disaster, and it's still a miracle the result is so good instead of the 30s equivalent of Batman and Robin .
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 04:30 pm (UTC)And yes, Scarlett's attitude makes perfect sense, as does her post-war pragmatism. (I love the scene early in the novel when she looks at the portraits of various Southern heroes and judges them by their looks.*g*) And her impatience when either Ashley or Rhett get into a speech about the greater meaning of it all.
All this being said, GWTW is partisan, and if I were a teacher assigning it to my class, I'd tell them to read, say, Roots in tandem, in order to get both povs.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 06:00 pm (UTC)I think that's a great idea. Because it really is both sides and both experiences.
While in no way minimizing the horrors of slavery or the crimes of some slave owners, I do think that when you read the slave narratives like Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, that it's complicated. People had very complicated relationships, slave, owner and freed, and very complicated feelings about things. And it can't really be reduced easily into Bad Guys vs. Good Guys.
I suppose the thing that irritates me to death is how in the US all Southerners have become the Bad Guys. A Southern accent on TV is a tip off that it's the villain. Manipulative, stupid, bigoted, or just plain fat and comic, the Idiot Bigoted Southerner (TM) is the rest of the country's stereotype. And here, in the aftermath of the election, I'm hearing a lot of "Well it's your stupid people being evil again, but what can one expect from inbred whip-wielders like you?"
I suppose it gets on my nerves the way Evil Strutting German (TM) gets on yours -- we're the local villains of the piece.
Gone With the Wind is about the only story left that doesn't do that -- whether well-meaningly or not. Which is not to say that I don't think that slavery is bad or wrong.
But I suppose it accounts in some inner way with my eternal sympathy for the devil!
no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 06:13 pm (UTC)More seriously: I can imagine how you feel. Also, yet another thing that makes the X-Men extraordinary! You have sympathetic Southerners (Rogue and that fellow Gambit I keep hearing about), and good guy Germans (Kurt)!
no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 06:24 pm (UTC)I suppose they must! Something of a nuance missing.
I think the apt comparison is Hogan's Heroes=Dukes of Hazzard. *g*
Yes, sympathetic Southerners and good Germans! What is the world coming to!
btw, in real life
no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 09:58 pm (UTC)Btw, rewatching GWTW I tried to discern the accent variations you indicated, but alas, I'm not nearly Henry Higgins enough and failed miserably.