Gone with the Wind (1939) Film Review

Gone with the Wind (1939) Director: Victor Fleming

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Based on the 1936 celebrated and controversial novel written by Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind is an epic tale written by a southern woman who grew up hearing stories of the “old south” in all its graces and vices from her grandmother. The novel was told in five parts, while the film condenses the story in two parts. The novel was mostly written in the late 1920s, curiously while Mitchell was obsessively reading erotica fiction.

The opening of Gone with the Wind presents a wistful portrait of nostalgia for a time that has now literally “gone with the wind.” The title is in reference to the English poet, Ernest Dowson, from his poetic lamentation entitled: “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae.” In the context of the poem, the phrase refers to the poet’s loss of passion, eroticism, and past love. The story is told from the perspective of the aristocracy in the old south, before, during, and after the Civil War. Here, we see glimpses of the south: the Frenchmen in their gaiety and fashionable garb, the Englishmen in their regal gentlemanliness, and the Irishmen farmers (like the O’Hara family). It opens during a sweet and peaceful scene at Tara, a cotton plantation outside Atlanta. “There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.” Thus, Gone With The Wind ranks as the most notorious film defending the “Lost Cause” southern mythology about the Civil War. Our lead southern belle, Scarlett O’Hara, is in love with Ashley Wilkes. But at another garden party at a neighboring plantation, Twelve Oaks, Ashley is set to announce his engagement to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. Scarlett haphazardly professes her love to him in the library, but he cannot reciprocate as their personalities are too different. She grows angry at him and he leaves the room, and suddenly Rhett Butler, a rogueish man, has been hiding in the room the whole time. He praises Scarlett’s lack of grace, but she yells at him ‘you aren’t fit to wipe his boots!’ And she storms out of the library to learn that war has been declared and all the men begin celebrating and expressing their eagerness to enlist in the army. But Rhett Butler is a lone voice of skepticism. He believes the war is a lost cause.

Not long thereafter, in a further act of defiance, Scarlett agrees to marry a young soldier Charles Hamilton, cousin of Ashley Wilkes, which she hopes will make Ashley jealous, but Charles dies of a disease several weeks into the war (in the novel, it is pneumonia followed by the measles, and also in the book Scarlett gives birth to their child, as well, though this part is absent from the film). Scarlett becomes a lady in mourning. She travels to live with Melanie in Atlanta where they become involved in the war effort. One night, Scarlett encounters Rhett Butler again at a Confederate charity benefit. He has become a blockade runner (running supplies in disguise through blockade lines). At Christmas, Ashley is allowed to return home briefly, and Melanie becomes pregnant. Soon, the war effort turns worse and Atlanta is assaulted on all sides. Injured Confederate soldiers overwhelm the city, and Scarlett must help Melanie deliver her baby without any medical assistance, all while the city is being lit afire by the Confederates who are unwilling to surrender their supplies and ammunition over to the Union army. In the chaos, Scarlett finds Rhett and begs him to take them back to Tara, her family’s home. He laughs at the idea, but steals an old horse and carriage and they flee the city together just as anarchy begins to ensue. Rhett soon leaves them and he returns to the war effort, greatly disappointing Scarlett. When she arrives home, she finds that Tara has been left in tatters. The Union army robbed and burned the old buildings, all the cotton in the fields is destroyed, and the slaves have mostly left. In the moonlight their old house still stands. Scarlett enters to find that her father has grown delusional beside her ill sisters, and she learns that her mother has died. All that is left of the family’s wealth is now tied up in Confederate bonds. They are quite literally living on the brink of starvation. Scarlett walks out into the fields at sunset and finds an old carrot that she eats and she defiantly screams out:

“As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they’re not going to lick me! I’m going to live through this, and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again – no, nor any of my folks! If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill! As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

In Part II, Scarlett runs the plantation, picking cotton and growing food, all the while her family is under ever-present danger. Confederate troops –demoralized– keep marching southward in retreat and Union soldiers, under General Sherman, are leaving a wake of utter destruction through Georgia. One day, a Union deserter breaks into the house at Tara and Scarlett kills him with Rhett’s pistol. Melanie was also prepared to attack him with a sword (he is portrayed as an evil man who may have intended to rape the women). By now, Ashley has returned to Tara, but he appears to be mostly useless as a farmer. At any rate, in desperate need of money to pay the high taxes demanded by the Union men, Scarlett visits to Rhett to ask for the money, but he is now imprisoned in Atlanta and refuses to give her the money. Then, she visits an old acquaintance, Frank Kennedy, who has money thanks to his successful general store. She hatches a plan and agrees to marries him in order to pay off the taxes on Tara. In a scandalous, unladylike manner, she begins running the business and expanding it to secure solid income by opening a new mill (this time in Scarlett’s life is expounded upon in greater detail in the novel as Scarlett is soon pregnant with Frank’s child, as well). On one of her trips out to the mill, Scarlett is attacked by vagrants in the woods, but she is saved at the last moment by “Big Sam,” one of the former slaves of Tara. In retaliation, several men, including Ashley, Rhett Butler, and her husband, Frank Kennedy, plan to exact vengeance on the vagrants and clean out the woods. However, Georgia is under martial law and the soldiers keep a close watch over the households. When the men return late that night under the guise of drunkenness, Frank Kennedy has been shot. Again, Scarlett goes into mourning when Frank dies.

At last, we arrive at the culmination of the film –the romance between Rhett and Scarlett. They are married shortly after Frank’s death and Scarlet gives birth to a daughter nicknamed “Bonnie Blue.” However, she continues to pine for Ashley which angers Rhett, and a rumor springs up in town that Scarlett and Ashley have been seen doing unsavory things with one another. An irate Rhett then forces Scarlett to attend Ashley’s birthday celebration where she will be mocked and publicly scorned, and that night he gets drunk and sexually assaults her. Their relationship grows tumultuous after Scarlett is pushed down a flight of stairs which forces her to suffer a miscarriage. Then their daughter Bonnie dies in a tragic equestrian accident, which is followed by the sorrowful death of Melanie due to pregnancy complications. As she consoles Ashley, Scarlett finally realizes it was Rhett she has loved all along, not Ashley. But she is too late. Rhett is leaving out the front door, and despite her pleas, he retorts “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” as he strolls out in to the foggy morning air. The film ends with Scarlett pledging to return to Tara and win back Rhett’s heart.

In some ways, Gone With The Wind is an epic tale about haughty, vain young Scarlett finally receiving her comeuppance. When the war destroys all semblance of livelihood in the south, it is up to women like Scarlett to eek out a life –“If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill! As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.” However, despite a latent feminism in the character of Scarlett O’Hara, and all her accompanying sexual empowerment, Gone With The Wind nevertheless presents a disgraceful veneration of the antebellum south, glamorizing plantation life as peaceful and orderly, filled with happy slaves who are only too happy to serve their masters, whether it be for manual labor or comedic relief. Mercifully, the Ku Klux Klan scene was written out of the script (under protest from the NAACP, even though the KKK does appear as a heroic organization in the novel). Notably, Hattie McDaniel won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role as Mammy, however she was still forbidden from attending the film’s premiere in Atlanta in 1939 due to segregation rules in the south at the time and she was forced to sit at a racially segregated table at the Academy Awards celebration (the hotel apparently only allowed her entry as a favor to the Academy). Like D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind has spawned much justifiable protest, both then and now. Yet Gone With The Wind is also a staggering technicolor achievement (like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind was shot in three strip technicolor), and it serves as the harbinger of Old Hollywood beckoning a new age of color. Released shortly after the outbreak of WWII in Europe, audiences identified with its themes of nostalgia for simpler times and survival during times of war. And somehow, the dynamic between Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh strikes a perfect chord, as Roger Ebert notes: “Gable, the hard-drinking playboy whose studio covered up his scandals; Leigh, the neurotic, drug-abusing beauty who was the despair of every man who loved her.”

Amidst the volatile personalities on the set, the film cycled through several directors, including George Cukor who battled with Gable and was then replaced by Victor Fleming, but he collapsed from nervous exhaustion (which may have been faked) and was then relieved by Sam Wood and Cameron Menzies. Complemented by David O. Selznick’s flair and Max Steiner’s incredible score for the film, Gone with the Wind managed to unite an incredible group of talents. It is often hailed as the great box-office champion of all time and with good reason. 1939 was certainly Victor Fleming’s year – maintaining roles as lead director of both The Wizard of Oz, as well as Gone with the Wind. What a year!

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Credits:

• Director: Victor Fleming
• Screenplay by: Sidney Howard
• Based on: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Produced by: David O. Selznick
• Starring:
  • Clark Gable…..Rhett Butler
  • Vivien Leigh…..Scarlett O’Hara
  • Leslie Howard…..Ashley Wilkes
  • Olivia de Havilland…..Melanie Hamilton
  • Hattie McDaniel…..Mammy
• Cinematography: Ernest Haller
• Edited by: Hal C. Kern and James E. Newcom
• Music by: Max Steiner
• Production Companies: Selznick International Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• Distributed by: Loew’s Inc.

Other Notes:

• Original director George Cukor was fired under somewhat mysterious circumstances after worked on the production for two years of planning. According to some accounts, he butted heads with producer David Selznick, but in other more salacious tales, Cukor’s open homosexuality led to conflict with Clark Gable who allegedly refused to work under a homosexual who makes primarily “woman’s films.” However, Vivien Leigh was very unhappy with Cukor being replaced by the “man’s man” Victor Fleming and she brought a copy of the novel to the set each day to remind Fleming of its superiority to the script. Either way, Cukor departed 18 days into filming. He was then replaced with Victor Fleming who, after shooting The Wizard of Oz and following some 93 days of filming on Gone With The Wind, threatened to drive his car off a cliff in an apparent nervous breakdown (which may have been faked). The film was left to be finished by Sam Wood (who shot approximately 24 days).
• Vivien Leigh almost didn’t get the role when she enunciated her lines with her British accent.
• The Ocala, Florida chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy protested the selection of Vivien Leigh, an English woman, to play a southern lady. But their protest died when they learned Katharine Hepburn could also be selected for the role –better an Englishwoman than a Yankee!
• Howard Leslie despised playing the much younger role of Ashley Wilkes.
• When writing the script, David Selznick, Victor Fleming, and Ben Hecht were apparently locked away by Selznick in a room, satiated only by peanuts and bananas, and by the end Selznick collapsed in exhaustion (in ned of resuscitation) and Fleming burst a blood vessel in his eye. Ultimately, it took some 16 different writers to finalize the script (one of whom was F. Scott Fitzgerald). The convoluted writing process for Gone With The Wind has been satirized in a stage comedy entitled Moonlight and Magnolias.