Seventy-five years ago this December (yes, we'll celebrate again...albeit in a different way) Gone With the Wind premiered. No, that isn't quite right. This epic about a selfish Southern Belle surviving the Civil War and beyond ARRIVED IN STYLE with a three day celebration in Atlanta which reportedly drew one million visitors -- how'd they fit them all into the theater? (Hee). 1939's Best Picture winner arrived with roughly a bajillion times the anticipation that today's blockbusters get because pop culture was far less fragmented back then and everyone was obsessed with it. It would stay in theaters for literally years (the first couple of them at twice the normal ticket price) and become the biggest cinematic smash the world would ever see. To put it into perspective only Star Wars ever came close with The Sound of Music, E.T. and Titanic fighting for a distant third.
To look at something this large for a single defining image is an impossible task (or two images rather since we've split it in half). My favorite recurring visual motif of the film, Scarlett moving against the current of the crowd as befitting her singular tetchy anti-heroine nature and her duties as protagonist just doesn't look magnificent in freeze frames, but my favorite instances are two: First, when war has been declared and she walks up the stairs calmly through a sea of pastel dresses running down them (bless the film's first fired director George Cukor - that's obviously his work!), and second, her selfish exit from the scene of an amputation when she moves from the sweaty interior nightmare of a hospital to the shock of an exterior nightmare of chaos outside in the streets. Other favorite images were too small or atypical. For instance, there's this calming exquisitely lit shot of Mr and Mrs Ashley Wilkes. [more...]
It simultaneously gets at both their quasi platonic marriage, the twilight of their world, and their perfect compatibility. But you can't skip Scarlett!
Other images though mythic, are robbed of some of their site-specific meaning by complete pop culture saturation. But then Gone With the Wind was always more than a movie, so there's nothing wrong with choosing one of those as many participants did. My choice for best shot maybe qualifies a one of those, a hot moment between Scarlett & Rhett, but I want to take an important pause to honor the epic's second most prominent Love/Hate story: Scarlett & Melanie. These are my two favorite shots of that relationship...
Oh Scarlett, you're so sweet to worry about Ashley like this for me."
The first image is a delicious cold snap of comedy in the middle of an otherwise harrowing list-of-the-dead scene (I always forget how funny Vivien Leigh is in this movie -- her "I hate your baby" moment later is just hilariously endearing; she's so awful!) The second image, which pans from twin guardian angel shadows to the full detail is Scarlett and Melanie at the hospital watching over the dying. When the full picture is revealed, Scarlett is absentmindedly playing with whatever she's got in her hands desperate to be anywhere but there burdened by the pain of other people; Melanie is the only angel in the scene, intently listening to pained memories of home from the dying.
Perhaps in anticipation of the romantic drama which will dominate Part Two -- I settled on this iconic embrace between Scarlett & Rhett. In a carnal twist on the Ashley/Scarlett, Melanie/Scarlett, Charles/Scarlett continuum of unrequited loves of all sorts, Scarlett is the loved but unloving. But Rhett, crucially Scarlett's only match in unredeemed selfishness, could care less about her feelings and yanks her into an embrace. But here's what's perfect about the image and the moment and the myth of Gone With the Wind: all the detailed splendor of elaborate set designs and costumes and ambitious shots of extras by the hundreds have vanished, all the painful reality of the Atlanta sequences has been vaporized with the city. All the remains, really, is two immortal movie stars on a fiery red soundstage.
Best Shot
All that you're left with is a movie that's too grand to be like life in anyway, even to be larger than. It incinerates reality replacing it with self-mythology. This is Gone With the Wind as Romantic Epic as Movie-Movie as Legend. This is Old Hollywood at the peak of its magical powers. It sees you in the dark. It knows your dreams and can conjure them. You need to be kissed. Often. And by someone who knows how.
Here is the collection of Best Shots from 12 more players (since Part 2 is next Tuesday, I'm happy to add in latecomers before the climax if you've been dragging your feet). Click on the photos to read the corresponding articles
BEST SHOTS - GONE WITH THE WIND'S FIRST HALF
Directed by Victor Fleming (and George Cukor and Sam Wood, uncredited)
Cinematography by Ernest Haller with Technicolor consultant Ray Rennahan (and Lee Garmes, uncredited)
Tara grounds her, something she both resents and loves...
- Awards Madness
Calling Scarlett on her nonsense...
-Allison Tooey
There are hints that Gone with the Wind’s attitudes might not be as regressive as you might think...
-Coco Hits NY
In the seventh and eighth grade, I had this social studies teacher. We’ll call her Ms. B. [she] announces to the class that we’re going to spend a week watching Gone With the Wind..."
-Pop Culture Crazy
Scarlett exists in a dream world within a dream world where war is not coming and the Old South will never die...
-Cinemunch
A rude shock to see such realism amongst Scarlett's personal dramas...
-Lam Chop Chop
One of those movies that's so much bigger than anything you can measure it against that even calling it a "movie" seems inadequate...
-Antagony & Ecstasy
I barred myself from anything that has been or ever will be used in an Oscar montage...
-Video Valhalla *new participant*
No matter how you feel about the film, there's no denying its visual grandeur....
-Film Actually
'Fiddle Dee, why I'm only the greatest female character in the history of film'...
-The Film's The Thing
The juxtaposition between real pain and romanticized glory epitomizes the first act...
-We Recycle Movies
The film has no shortage of sumptuous images of the war's destructive power....
-The Entertainment Junkie
And The Futurist picks cheekily (above) but it's appropriate.
Stretch your legs, grab some popcorn, read the articles at your own speed and then be back here Tuesday night for Part 2 !!!