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GWTW was the Titanic of its day. It was epic, well-made, and hugely popular. I don't think an unlikeable character or historic inaccuracy necessarily make this movie, or any other movie terrible. It's a product of its time.
If by comparing GWTW with Titanic you mean that both were highly overrated, historically inaccurate, and ridiculously expensive to produce, I agree wholeheartedly.
I've managed to sit through both movies exactly one time, and it was a chore in both cases. Being a history buff, especially Civil War era history, I found GWTW to be almost painful to watch. Clark Gable I like, Vivien Leigh I could live without. About the only thing I found enjoyable in this movie was the scenery, and there wasn't enough of it.
As for Titanic, the thought of taking one of the biggest disasters in history and turning it into a sappy love story makes me nauseous. I actually found myself rooting for Billy Zane's character.
All that being said, the racism of GWTW had pretty much nothing to do with my dislike of the movie. Racism was still widely prevalent in the 1930's, and was an accepted viewpoint for most, especially in the south. Honestly, I don't feel the movie itself is racist, it's more that the movie portrays the racism that was prevalent during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Doesn't change the fact that Scarlett O'Hara was a grade-A B-word, though.
Love the book, love the movie. You have a right to your opinion. I sometimes have a strongly held minority opinion as you do here since many more people loved it than not. in cases like yours, I try not to expend to much blood pressure energy on arguing about entertainment though. I mean, why?
I agree. The arguments are more about the subject matter than the movie. I often find that those who are most vociferous in their objections are the very people who haven't done in-depth research into written studies from BOTH sides of an argument, but have adopted a comfortable point-of-view early-on, taking one side or the other. I agree that slavery was a stupid thing to hold on to. If the Indians hadn't been killed by cholera and smallpox and infighting, perhaps they might have been the ones subjugated. The movie was partly about the changes that occurred during the violent transitions.
In the book version of Gone With The Wind, a darkie *ahem* I mean a black man attempts to assault Scarlett. Luckily for her, the Klan swoops in to the rescue. Here are Margaret Mitchell's thoughts on the KKK:
Certainly Pulitzer Prize winning material.
The events in the movie are the preceptions of the characters. The preceptions of a character should be true to time and circumstance. They should reflect the time. Sometimes such reflections are ugly. I'd much rather see that than a revised history. I keep my historical research to first generation and at most second sources.
We may not share those perceptions, but we don't have to to reflect the reality of a time.
Humans can be kind and loving and vengeful and hating and ignorant and a mixture of the above. Look at us today with a clear vision and we might not sound like the people we think we are. We are all the sum of the perceptions we see, were taught and lived, and unless one shared them its not possible to walk in their shoes. But find diaries and memiours and see how they saw the world. It's not fair to judge those who's world was so different than ours. We have every right to disagree, but that reflects on us, not them since they are gone.
I agree. The arguments are more about the subject matter than the movie. I often find that those who are most vociferous in their objections are the very people who haven't done in-depth research into written studies from BOTH sides of an argument, but have adopted a comfortable point-of-view early-on, taking one side or the other. I agree that slavery was a stupid thing to hold on to. If the Indians hadn't been killed by cholera and smallpox and infighting, perhaps they might have been the ones subjugated. The movie was partly about the changes that occurred during the violent transitions.
It wouldn't be made the same today. It wouldn't be about the real time but some messagy mess. The sequal they made really was awful. Scarlett was unrecognizable.
What I hate is when people who know nothing of history take on some period book (or movie) and condem it because it reflects the time it was written. Isn't that what they are supposed to do, transport you to a different place? Sometimes its not such a nice one.
This is a good review. The whole thing is too long to post, but I encourage you to read it.
Quote:
Gone With the Wind. If you haven’t, already, take a look at the other reviews. There are nineteen, as of the time of my writing, four four stars and fifteen five star reviews. In short, Margaret Mitchell seems to walk on water. The novel is full of “universal values of hope and tenacity” and “characters I can identify with.”
Which is, alas, overblown rhetoric and hyperbole, and ignores some of the salient features of the novel.
Before I start to give it the rubbishing it richly deserves, I need to give a few caveats. Prime amongst them is my complete understanding as to why novel is so popular, particularly amongst women. It is hard to find a novel about a honestly strong and resourceful woman, and for all its numerous faults, Gone With the Wind has a strong female character who is as ruthless, cold and calculating as any man. I like Scarlett O’Hara. I also honestly liked, most of the time, Rhett Butler, as a character. And since they’re, pretty much, the stars of the show that’s a good thing. Not good enough to overcome the grinding faults, the faults that several times during the course of the novel almost stopped me from going on, faults that lifted their ugly head and smashed at my mind like waves against a sinking ship. I only barely managed to finish the novel and while I found parts of the novel quite charming I am reviewing it as a whole.
For those of you who haven’t read the book or seen the movie, Gone With the Wind is about the trials of Scarlett O’Hara, a Southern belle on the eve of the American Civil War whose world is turned upside down and almost destroyed by that conflict. Scarlett goes around violating social and sexual taboos, paying a dramatic social price, not only marrying repeatedly but running her own business with ruthless aggression but the focus is on Scarlett’s various romances. On a larger scale, the book is about the devastation wrought by the Civil War and, almost, the nature and character of Southern gentility.
What is it, then, that abraded my soul while reading this book? In short: slavery.
Okay, okay, before we go any farther, allow me to say that I did my best to give allowances for the fact that Gone With the Wind is about Southern gentility. It would be absurd to think that Southern gentility would, as a group, have anything good to say about abolition or honestly think of black people as fully articulated human beings. Furthermore, I am well aware that if disliked every book because the author held an idea I found to be detestable than I would never like any books. But what Mitchell does in Gone With the Wind is invent a fantasyland of plantation slavery in order to justify the character’s infatuation for that foul institution.
The events in the movie are the preceptions of the characters. The preceptions of a character should be true to time and circumstance. They should reflect the time. Sometimes such reflections are ugly. I'd much rather see that than a revised history. I keep my historical research to first generation and at most second sources.
We may not share those perceptions, but we don't have to to reflect the reality of a time.
It's perception, not "preception." At any rate, the movie is racist garbage. The book is racist garbage. It's not like the Heart of Darkness where we're viewing the events through the eyes of the novel's protagonist. In GWTW, Mitchell herself is the narrator. So her racist commentary is in no way "true to the time and circumstance" of the era she writes about. That would be like writing a novel in 2012 about an American lieutenant in the Mexican-American War and dropping the word "*******" every few sentences in the third-person omniscient narrative. Then exclaiming, "Hey, that's what Americans thought of Mexicans back then!" No, it's what you, as the narrator of the book, think about Mexicans right now.
Gone With The Wind was written by a racist, during a racist time in American history, and glorified a racist institution. I don't see how it's much different from Triumph of the Will, honestly.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 01-13-2012 at 07:40 PM..
Racism was still widely prevalent in the 1930's, and was an accepted viewpoint for most, especially in the south. Honestly, I don't feel the movie itself is racist, it's more that the movie portrays the racism that was prevalent during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.
Anti-Semitism was also prevalent in 1930s Germany. But I'm sure people don't shower the same admiration on the movies Joseph Goebbels produced during the Third Reich. Quite the opposite: People recognize anti-Semitism/Nazism for the sick pathology that it was and openly condemn it. Who in their right mind gives the Nazis and Triumph of the Will a pass because anti-Semitism was "an accepted viewpoint for most?" Likewise, who in their right mind gives Margaret Mitchell (and the movie) a pass because anti-black racism "was an accepted viewpoint for most."
Give it up, Yankee. Although I do credit your incredible talent of digging up old movie and novel reviews.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee
I'm sure Birth of a Nation had its merits too.
Oh, it did. So many of the film techniques that we take for granted were applied in Birth of a Nation. Some of them DW Griffith was employing for the first time, other technical and artistic effects were refinements of effects he'd tried in earlier films: crosscutting between parallel stories (which he perfected in Intolerance), night cinematography, shooting one scene from multiple angles, increased use of dissolves and fade-outs, panning across the scene, zooming in to facial closeups, and extensive battle scenes.
It proved that there was an audience for longer films, giving directors and screenwriters more leeway in storytelling.
And it used color.
Pretty cool -- and influential -- for 1915, eh? [/SIZE]
GWTW? seriously.... Sorry "land of the lost" is the worst movie ever....
Kind of dated, and yes I never really sympathized with Scarlett. And I automatically completely despise any movie or book where a child dies... Did like the book better though - again with dated ideals though. The whole Civil War era and its stories is completely fascinating though. And yes, not too long ago, people were racist.
When I first saw Gone with the Wind, I thought as if I was watching some sort of alluring story that covered a 20 year period.
Scarlett is at best what would be called an "Anti-Hero", she does do some petty bratty things, but how she survives the poverty and desolation of Reconstruction truely defines her strong character. And Rhett is the true definition of what a gentleman should be, even if he is to an extent the "Only sane man" in the story.
The movie is great if you are open minded enough to view as a relic of the time period it took place in and was filmed in. It's much like how we today look back at World War II, back in the 1930's most people's grandparents were on one side or the other in the War Between the State.
But in regards to the OP's opinions, all I have is this to say:
Last edited by Desert kid; 01-13-2012 at 11:08 PM..
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