Gone with the Wind (1939)

Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War bestseller was snapped up by megalomaniac producer David O. Selznick, who resisted Mitchell’s suggestion that he cast Basil Rathbone as Rhett Butler in favor of the fans’ only choice, Clark Gable. After a nationwide talent search and a Hollywood catfight involving every potential leading lady in town, Selznick hired British Vivien Leigh to play Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara. Insistent from the first that every detail be sumptuous, Selznick then wore out at least three directors (Sam Wood, George Cukor, and Victor Fleming), set fire to the surviving King Kong sets to stage the burning of Atlanta, hired enough extras to refight the Civil War, and sat back to watch the Oscars and acclaim roll in.

Conceived from the outset as the ultimate Hollywood movie, Gone with the Wind became the benchmark for popular epic cinema for decades to come. Though the film is monumental enough to be beyond criticism, most of its really great scenes come in the first half, which was substantially directed by Cukor, who brought his skilled touch with character and nuance to the material with a great epic sweep. Fleming, meanwhile, best known for directing macho action, somehow wound up handling the soapier stretches as the leads’ marriage falters through postbellum ups and downs far less compelling than the war-torn cross-purposes romance that got them together.

The motor of the plot is the vacillating heart of Scarlett, whom Leigh plays first as flighty then flinty: she is so infatuated with gentlemanly Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) that she marries several lesser (and doomed) milksops when he opts for the more conventionally feminine (and doomed) Melanie (Olivia de Havilland). Rhett Butler, a pragmatist rather than an idealist, enters the picture and she is drawn to him as the war overturns the Southern way of life, marrying him after she has sworn never to go hungry again and to do anything it takes to keep Tara, her father’s plantation, going despite the depredations of Yankees and carpetbaggers. Only when Rhett rejects her does she realize she truly loves him, prompting the classic have-it-both-ways ending in which he walks out (“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”) and she swears to win him back (“Tomorrow is another day”).

Like The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone with the Wind tidies up a lot of complex history, showing only happy devoted slaves and depicting Ashley’s postwar involvement in a hooded Klan organization as a genuinely heroic (if doomed) endeavor. But the sweep of the movie is near irresistible, and Selznick’s set pieces are among the most emblematic in cinema history: the pullback from Scarlett as she walks amongst the wounded to fill the screen with injured soldiers in gray, the dash through the blazes as Atlanta burns, Gable carrying Leigh upstairs into sexual shadows. Dressed up with gorgeous 1939 Technicolor, pastel-pretty for the dresses and blazing red for the passions, and a thunderous Max Steiner score, this still has a fair claim to be considered the last word in Hollywood filmmaking.

Cast and Production Credits

Year – 1939, Genre – Romance, Country – U.S.A, Language – English, Producer – David O. Selznick, Director – Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Music Director – Max Steiner, Cast – Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O’Neil,Evelyn Keyes, Ann Rutherford, George Reeves, Fred Crane, Hattie McDaniel, Oscar Polk, Butterfly McQueen, Victor Jory, Everett Brown