Oscars Retrospective: Gone With the Wind (12th Academy Awards Review)
Gone With the Wind Suite~Max Steiner - Gone With the Wind
There’s a way of examining American cultural history by stating that each decade sort of has its own distinctive and easily identifiable culture that changes around the turn of the decade. While it’s not really a hard and fast rule as you won’t notice that much of a change overnight (for those that remember it, was 2010 really all that different from 2009?), you could definitely see the change when comparing the two as a whole (compare the 2000s to the 2010s and you’ll notice distinct cultural differences in America at the time). The same applies to filmmaking and, more specifically, Hollywood’s way of filmmaking which has distinct changes from decade to decade.
Gone With the Wind was the culmination of 1930s Hollywood. Everything that has been mentioned about filmmaking in the 1930s came to a climax here. The soapy romances, the new type of acting brought on by the talkies, the epic sets, the new technologies that were being worked on, the kinks in the storytelling process being ironed out. And, shortly afterwards, the whole process would be shaken up by World War II, beginning the next chapter in Hollywood’s history.
Gone With the Wind is highly regarded by cinephiles and film historians as one of the most important filmmaking achievements of all time and its reputation precedes it. It received ten Academy Awards (Outstanding Production, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Color Cinematography, Best Film Editing, an honorary award “for achievement in the use of color” and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award), setting a record that would be held for almost 20 years until Ben Hur in 1959.
Of course, given that this blog series is meant to rag on the Oscars, that honestly doesn’t matter so how about this? Gone With the Wind beat out Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ (1937) box office receipts, becoming the highest-grossing film ever made at the time. In addition, Gone With the Wind also holds the record for the longest amount of time any film has ever been the highest-grossing movie of all time. Kinda.
Its gross was beaten briefly in 1955 with Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments before Gone With the Wind was re-released and retook its crown. This happened again in 1967 with The Sound of Music before Gone With the Wind opened up with another re-release. It wasn’t until 1975 that Gone With the Wind’s record was finally eclipsed by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, a full thirty-six years after its original release date. As if that’s not enough, Gone With the Wind also retains the record for the highest-grossing movie of all time once adjusted for inflation, meaning that it’s more profitable than Avatar (2009), The Avengers: Endgame (2019) or any other blockbuster that you can think of.
Based on the best-selling 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind details the life and times of Southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), the daughter of a Georgian plantation owner, as the entire Southern culture and way of life is uprooted by the American Civil War. The film is a 4-hour-long opus and, thus, is pretty easy to divide into quarters: the first hour is about life in the antebellum South before the Civil War, the second hour shows life during the Civil War, the third is after the war and the last hour is about Scarlett’s marriage to the dashing Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) (I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that the two get together eventually).
I am aware that this film has recently been mired in controversy lately as being a staple of the Lost Cause nationalism concerning the Confederate States of America and glorifying slavery and we’ll talk about that later on but, for right now, I’m concerned about analyzing Gone With the Wind as a movie. And as a movie, it is very excellent. I mean, it’s four Goddamned hours, it better be good if it’s going to demand that much of your time.
The cinematography is downright stunning. In just a decade, color in movies had gone from looking like this to this. Not only is the use of color still stunning to this day but it’s smartly used to tell the story. For example, take the scene near the beginning where Scarlett and her father (Thomas Mitchell) walk across the plantation as the sun sets. It’s a beautifully composed shot with the color popping off the screen. But it also works thematically as it’s one of the last days of Scarlett’s childhood before the war comes. The sun is literally setting on Scarlett’s childhood.
Vivien Leigh’s portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara has grown to become one of the great American feminist icons, refusing to accept any of the defeats that life throws at her. She’s also one of the very few characters in cinematic history who’s hard to define as an archetype. She’s not a hero, she’s not a villain, she’s just… Scarlett O’Hara. She slowly transforms into the glue that holds her community together, keeping the community alive day after day with an unbreakable will, leading to her iconic line:
Yet, she is still selfish, conceited and can be downright ruthless and nasty to those that she considers beneath her or in her way. The big conflict of the film is that she constantly lusts after her neighbor Ashley (Leslie Howard) who’s married to Scarlett’s cousin, Melanie (Olivia de Havilland). Years will pass by and she still tries to manipulate the two into breaking up. But, at the same time, she also has moments of surprising selflessness towards the two.
It does bear mentioning that Scarlett clearly suffers from an acute case of arrested development combined with post-traumatic stress disorder. She starts off the film as a spoiled 16-year-old brat who has her whole life laid out for her as the center of attention which is then taken away almost overnight. Thus, the rest of the movie is about her desperately trying to reclaim and rebuild her childhood even though it’s gone (with the wind!). This makes for a very complex, understandable and 3-dimensional protagonist as you alternate between admiring her for her resolve but also getting annoyed at her bratty behavior.
The film is also very smart about its ending from a moral point-of-view. One of the Hays Code’s stipulations is that the villain, even if they are the main character of the film, must always get what’s coming to them, whether it be jail, death or humiliation. Where Scarlett ends up though seems fitting for her grey archetype. Without giving the ending away, she’s defeated but we still get the sense that she will never give up and will continue to hold her home together.
But now let’s talk about Rhett Butler, the other main character. Clark Gable is a name that has appeared a few times already in this series and, in 1939, was the undisputed King of Hollywood, becoming the biggest star of an era that was defined by its stars. And this seems like a fitting capstone to his career as Gone With the Wind is the film that he’s most famous for and easily his most complex and layered performance. (His profession would be shelved temporarily as he served in World War II. After coming home, said career ebbed and flowed, with its flows usually coincidentally taking place around Gone With the Wind’s re-releases.)
Rhett starts off the film being a mystery wrapped in an enigma. While all of the other Southern boys act like high-class fops, Rhett seems like a man of the world. Besides being the only character who seems to realize that the South is likely to get destroyed in the upcoming war, he’s also the only character who sees Scarlett for who she really is. Every other man seems to fawn over her but Rhett talks to her straight and calls her out on her bull. From there, he flits in and out of her life like a ghost. The more he appears, the more we wonder and the more we find out, the more interesting he becomes. It’s very masterfully done.
If Scarlett is an icon of femininity, then Rhett could be seen as being the complexity of the American male of the 1930s, with all the good and the bad. While the rest of Scarlett’s paramours are well-to-do and hoity-toity, Rhett comes off as much more rugged and cool. This is a man who is completely in control of every conversation he finds himself in; in the scenes where he’s mouthed off to by the other Southern gentlemen, he just shrugs it off. Even when he serves in the Confederate Army, the whole thing seems like a game to him.
When we do find out more about him, however, we find out that he is no saint. Getting his control taken away from him also takes away his laidback attitude and he begins lashing out in increasingly nasty and unpleasant ways. Both Scarlett and Rhett thus provide for an allegory of the American woman and American man of the 1930s. People who survive the end of a civilization (the antebellum South in Gone With the Wind’s case, the Great Depression in then-contemporary American times) and yet possess unbreakable wills. They’re still people and people can do nasty, unpleasant things but they ultimately find their satisfaction in life by regaining control over their own destinies.
The rest of the cast is also very excellent although nothing too special. Many of these actors are no slouches to the Hollywood game (Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Victor Jory etc.) but this seems to be some of their best performances, even if they are all outshined by newcomer, Vivien Leigh. The most interesting side-character, however, is Hattie McDaniel as Mammy, Scarlett’s lead house slave-turned-sharecropper. Aside from Rhett, she’s the only character who really sees Scarlett’s true colors and does a beautifully understated performance as recognizing that the girl is heading down a dark path.
McDaniel would become the first African-American to win an Oscar, scoring the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. An award that she was unable to accept as the Academy Awards wouldn’t permit an African-American to attend the actual ceremony. A ceremony where she won an award. So, in other words, these guys were having their cake and eating it by being gracious enough to let a black woman win an Oscar but wouldn’t dare to let her attend the same party.
I guess this is probably the best time to segue into the Lost Cause myth that this film has been accused of propagating. For those who don’t know what the Lost Cause is, it’s basically a form of historical thinking that the South fought the Civil War to preserve their rights from the Northern aggressors. The antebellum South was known for being kind to its slaves, having a virtuous way of life and having better military minds, only losing because of the Union’s sheer economic and population might. For those who don’t know, most historians now regard this all as being a total crock of bull: the Vice President of the Confederacy explicitly stated they were seceding so they could keep slaves, life as a slave really sucked and Union Commander Ulysses S. Grant is now regarded as one of the best Generals in American history.
I’m really trying to walk on eggshells here as I’m aware that in a post-2020 world, we’re analyzing our shared past more and more and saying the wrong thing can easily land you on the wrong side of all this. That having been said, Gone With the Wind has definitely seen its own side of this paradigm with many modern viewers calling for it to be banned. So what to make of all this? Does Gone With the Wind, one of the most successful movies of all time, still have its place in today’s world?
Well, as you can probably gather from my thinly-veiled venom towards the Hays Code and MPAA, I am heavily against censorship, especially the Puritanical kind that claims to be outlawing works “for the children.” Not only because it ruins art but I also think it’s dangerous because it turns the banned object into a forbidden fruit. I mean think about it. When you were under the age of 21 and everyone told you that you couldn’t drink, didn’t that just make you want to drink even more?
In a perfect world, I think modern services should still have the film but attach with it a blurb or short video to contextualize its beliefs at the time period and explain why the beliefs have changed over the years and that’s okay because that’s part of history. From what I understand, that’s the current plan HBO has for putting on their streaming services so kudos in that regard.
All that having been said, this is going to sound really bizarre, but I actually think Gone With the Wind is a well-made enough movie that it still holds up in today’s world from the exact opposite point-of-view that it was originally trying to propagate. As you could probably figure out by this point, all of the characters in the film are pretty terrible people. So, instead of seeing it as the fall of an American way of life, you can instead see it as a bunch of pretentious jerks who get what’s coming to them and are desperately trying to cling onto a past that no longer deserves to exist. You can empathize with them without necessarily sympathizing with them.
It’s pretty easy to see Gone With the Wind through the lens that everything that Scarlett is doing is largely wrong just because she was brought up in this awful culture. In addition, it does bear mentioning that most of the slaves in the film are actual characters with a personality and not having the “yessum” stereotype that was all-too-frequent in 1930s films. While this sounds like a bare-bones congratulations; and make no mistake, it is; in 1930s America, it was somewhat of a step forward.
Gone With the Wind also does allow some progressive views in the Lost Cause narrative for its time period. For example, there’s the aforementioned scene where Rhett tells off the Southern gentlemen for acting like idiots who are going to get themselves killed and I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to side with him. There’s another scene where, in a desperate attempt to reclaim her lost childhood, Scarlett tries to buy prisoners to tend to her fields and basically have slaves again before Rhett talks her out of it. Once again, I think you’re supposed to leave this scene thinking that she’s clearly in the wrong for this.
I’m not saying that Gone With the Wind is a morally progressive film but it is still a very well-made film that can be viewed in a contemporary lens while also acknowledging its shortcomings for the time period it came out in.
Really, if there’s any problem with Gone With the Wind, it’s just how long it is. 4 hours is a big ask for an audience to sit still for what essentially amounts to a historical soap opera. While Gone With the Wind moves at a nice pace, you’ll definitely start feeling the length sometime shortly after the intermission. Thankfully, it starts to pick up in the last act which allows us to tie in to the last praise of Gone With the Wind, that being how much it pushed the envelope for a 1930s film.
Gone With the Wind has a lot of scenes and moments that I didn’t think would’ve been possible for a film under the Hays Code. Supposedly MGM had to obtain special permission from the Hays Office for many of the scenes but even still, it’s amazing how much they got away with. My favorite part of this film is the last hour where Scarlett and Rhett finally get married. While you’re initially imagining the typical Hollywood romance, instead these two bring out the worst in each other. What then follows is a very abusive marriage instigated by both parties that gets darker and darker the longer it goes on. There’s one particularly chilling scene that I won’t give away but it also has raised the film’s notoriety today as feminists accuse the film of endorsing Rhett’s actions though I think it is meant to be disturbing (you’ll know what I mean when you see it).
Hell, the movie even has a swear word in it. Now, granted, the swear word in question is “damn,” which I barely consider a swear word but, again, 1930s censor board, what can you do? Said usage of the word damn was also ranked by the American Film Institute as the greatest line in cinematic history so they really knew how to stick a landing. And, for the record, yes, it is a very great line. I’m not saying it because it’s one of the closing lines in the movie but it’s enormously satisfying for anyone who sat through the 4 hours of watching these two make each other miserable.
In conclusion, Gone With the Wind is one of the most remarkable cinematic achievements of all time and one that I think still has its place in the world. It’s engaging, a gigantic step forward in its usage of technology and also acts as a neat little time capsule of the values of 1930s America. I still like it a lot but, of course, the question is whether or not it actually deserved the Oscar. While you might think this was a blowout, the competition might have been a bit closer than you would think. Join me in the next installment to find out why.
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2
3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2
4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2
5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2
6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2
7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2
8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2
9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2
10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2
11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2
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