The most famous film about the Civil War, Gone with the Wind also represents why there are so few quality ones being made. But whatever reservations I have about Gone with the Wind’s politics, there is no ignoring that it is a masterpiece of cinema.
By adapting Margaret Mitchell’s novel of the same name, producer David O. Selznick labored to make the most sweeping epic ever realized, and quite frankly succeeded with a film that still holds the record for the most tickets ever sold to a moving picture (sorry, Avatar and Avengers fans). The legendary story of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), a Georgian Southern belle forced to survive the Civil War by any means necessary, Gone with the Wind transcends its potential melodramatic underpinnings and nightmarish cycling through directors to achieve a vision of plantation gentility, Northern carpetbagging villainy, and Southern apology.
Yes, like the much more abhorrent Birth of a Nation (1915) before it, Gone with the Wind rewrites the history of the Civil War to be one of Southern aggrievement, whitewashing the horrors of slavery along the way. But for its era, Gone with the Wind featured major progress from Hollywood and even earned Hattie McDaniel an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the first time an African-American was ever recognized (though she was not allowed to attend the film’s earlier Atlanta premiere due to segregation laws). Such Southern revisionism is ironically why Hollywood shied away from the subject years later, but it served as a monument to it here.
Despite these issues, Gone with the Wind is a part of American history itself as an expertly told and harrowing romance between Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), Scarlett O’Hara, and her infatuation for herself, traversing several decades and four hours for a yawning journey. Scarlett goes from apathetic reveler to destitute survivor to triumphant schemer. She even finds time to pine for her supposed best friend’s husband during all these years. Forget Sherman, the biggest scorched earth left in this Technicolor wonder is Scarlett’s pleas for “Ashley Wilkes” behind a misty-eyed, backward-looking Max Steiner score.